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OYER THE RIVER: 

OR, 

PLEASANT WALKS 

INTO THE 

VALLEY OF SHADOWS, AND BEYOND: 

J^ DBook of Consolations 
FOR THE SICK, THE DYING, AND THE BEREAVED. 

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BY THOMAS BALDWIN THAYEE. 




BOSTON: 
TOMPKINS & COMPANY, 

25 COKNHILL, 
1864. 






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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 

TOMPKINS & COMPANY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massa- 
chusetts. 



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or 
1 



TO 



THE MEMORY OF 



ABEL TOMPKINS, 

AX WHOSE REQUEST IT WAS UNDERTAKEN, 



THIS VOLUME 



IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE. 



Beside those named in the title-page, this little 
volume has two objects specially in view — 

First: To present the subject of death in its true 
light ; to show that the Scriptures speak of it cheer- 
fully, and in pleasant phrase ; to establish the fact 
that, as a rule, it is not attended either with the 
mental terror, or the extreme physical suffering, com- 
monly ascribed to it — and thus to remove that dread 
of dying which oppresses the minds and hearts of 
so many truly good persons, and is the cause of 
no little unhappiness to all who are passing down to 
the banks of the river of death. 

Second : To offer for the consideration of the 
thoughtful believer, more elevated and satisfactory 
views of the future state than prevail generally among 
Christians. When we consider the extent, the gran- 
deur and variety of the material universe, the count- 
less worlds which throng the abysses of space; 
it is surely reasonable to suppose that, since we 



VI PREFACE. 

cannot, while in the body, behold the wonders of 
God's creative power as displayed in these, we 
shall be permitted to visit them out of the body. 
It is difficult to believe that w^itli all these glones 
of God's creation calling to us from afar, we shall 
remain in any one place, singing hymns and play- 
ing on golden harps through eternal ages, and think 
this heaven — whatever the meaning we attach to 
these expressions. 

The book is sent forth as a Comforter, in these 
times when so many need comfort and courage and 
faith, with a prayer that the blessing of God may 
attend it on its mission of mercy. 

Boston, 3Iay, 1864. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

Comfort for the Sick. 



THE EEVELATIONS OF SICKNESS, 11 

REASONS FOR THANKFULNESS, 26 

GOOD IN EVIL, 84 

THE BLESSING OF A CHEERFUL PIETY, 42 

IS THY HOUSE IN ORDEfl ? . . - 54 

INSPIRED MEDITATIONS FOR THE SICK CHAMBER, 61 

DIVINE CONSOLATIONS FOR THE SICK, 66 



II. 

Bevelations for the Dying, 

"OVER THE RIVER," 75 

THE EARTHLY TENT — THE HEAVENLY HOUSE, 85 

FALLING ASLEEP, 98 

THE DEATH OF THE BODY THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT,.. 107 



8 CONTENTS. 

THE PASSAGE OF THE RIVER ANP THE PREPARATION 

FOR IT, .119 

THE WORLD BEYOND THE RIVER, OR THE GLORY OF 

THE CELESTIAL, 129 

EMPLOYMENTS OF THE FUTURE LIFE, 137 

THE ATTRACTIONS OF HEAVEN, 150 

ATTRACTIONS OF EARTH, 159 

THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER, 171 



III. 

Consolations for the Bereaved, 

THE LESSONS OF SORROW, 187 

THE SOUL'S HUNGER AND THE BREAD OF HEAVEN,.. . .193 

THROUGH TRIBULATION INTO THE KINGDOM, 200 

PEACE IN BELIEVING, 210 

DEATH OF HUSBAND OR WIFE, 217 

COMFORT THE CHILDREN, 228 

THE DEATH OF CHILDREN, 235 

THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD, 248 

THE DEAD NEVER GROW OLD, , 256 

"THE VALLEY OF PEACE," OR THE PLACE OF THE 

DEAD, 263 



I. 



In silence will T bear the pain 
Which God has sent me by his will ; 

Ne'er will I murmur nor complain ; 
Although he wounds, he loves me still. 

In sickness not the less God's child 

Than if the world around me smiled. 

True to himself, God changes never — 

Wise, mighty, merciful, forever. 

>HE lesson of suffering is, of all others, 
the most reluctantly learned; and yet 
it has often proved the most instructive 
and beneficial of all, bringing with it bless- 
ings which abide with us through life and 
death, and reach over even into the immortal 
sphere — ''for our light affliction, which is but 
for a moment, worketh for us a far more ex- 
ceeding and eternal weight of glory." Sick- 



12 THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 

ness, sorrow, bereavement, death, are but the 
. servants of God, teaching us heavenly things, 
reveahng to us the mystery of Divine Love 
forever educing good from evil ; and finally 
leading us up into the heavenly heights, whose 
clearer atmosphere enables us to see things 
in their true relations, and to discern afar off 
the beneficent results of our present trials. 

And yet, believing this, we do not love sor- 
row, we do not choose suffering, because of 
any good it may secure us. This is not sur- 
prising, when we consider the weakness and 
blindness of human nature. The boy who 
does not wish to go to school, still wishes for 
the knowledge which is the fruit of diligent 
study. So we do not like to suffer ; but we 
rejoice in the new life and heavenly-minded- 
ness which often are the product of it. We 
thank God for the gift of immortal hfe ; yet 
we do not like death, which is the only gate 
that leads to it. We believe in the ineffable 
joys of heaven, but we still cling to the com- 
paratively poor and transient joys, of earth. 



THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 13 

This Is well, for If there were no natural dread 
of death, no Instinctive shrinking from Its touch, 
we should desert the post of duty, and rashly 
fling life away on the first occasion of grief or 
misfortune. As It is, the matter Is so dispos- 
ed by the Lord of life and death, that, as a 
rule, however difficult our duties, however 
great our sorrows, we are willing to stay ; 
while, at the same time, he has given us such 
blessed hopes and consolations that, rightly 
accepted, we are willing to go when he calls 
us. 

And so, my suffering friend. It Is not a 
matter of wonder, that you cannot welcome 
sickness and bodily pain, or that you find 
them hard to bear, even though you may 
believe they are not wholly evil. But that 
the burthen may be lightened, let us com- 
mune together for a little of the things which 
the Lord hath spoken for your comfort and 
encouragement ; and of the benefits coming 
from affliction accepted In an humble and 
teachable spirit. And, 



14 THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 

First: Sickness reveals to every one the 
need of religious culture, and the value of 
religious faith ; and one of its obvious bene- 
fits is that it affords opportunity for reflec- 
tion and meditation on this important theme. 
It may be that you have not hitherto given 
much thought to religious things, to the 
Bible, to God, to the nature and needs of 
your own soul. The world, its cares, and 
gains, and ambitions, have wholly engrossed 
your attention ; and spiritual things have been 
pushed aside, forgotten or driven out of mind 
in ihe hurry and eager rush of your worldly 
life. Possibly it has never seriously occur- 
red to you that sickness and suffering and 
death might fall to your lot ; that this life is 
brief at the longest ; and that, by and by, you 
must pass on '^over the river," and leave 
behind you all you have, and all you love. 

But now you will have time to think of 
these things ; and you will discover that you 
are not quite sufficient for yourself; that 
health and strength may suddenly depart, and 



THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 15 

the frail thread of life be snapped at any 
moment, and that it is wise to be prepared 
for it. Prostrated upon the bed of sickness, 
withdrawn from the excitements and interests 
which have so long held you in bondage, a 
favorable and fitting season is granted you for 
self-communion and reflection on these grave 
and paramount questions. And, brought face 
to face with the great realities, you will begin 
to prepare for the new experience born of 
them, in an earnest and humble spirit, — and 
then the blessing is not afar oiF. 

Second: This sickness will reveal to you 
your entire and constant dependence on God ; 
and how it is that you live, and move, and 
have all your blessings, in him. Through all 
these years God has been your support and 
protection, the source of life and health, and 
the giver of every good and perfect gift you 
have enjoyed. But how often have you re- 
membered him with gratitude and thanksgiv- 
ing for these blessings ? How often have you 
sought the guidance of his wisdom, the bless- 



16 THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 

Ing of his holy spirit? How often have you 
prayed for strength to overcome the tempta- 
tions and to bear the trials which might meet 
you in the difficult paths of life? But now 
you will think of God. Weak and feeble, 
and suffering under the hand of disease, you 
will turn to him for comfort and strength ; 
and you will find him a very present help in 
time of trouble, for the ear of the Lord is 
ever open to them that call upon him. 

And what a blessed thing it is, even at 
the cost of sickness and bodily anguish, to be 
able to shake off the entanglements of the 
world ; and worn, weary and fainting, to lie, 
as it were, on the bosom of the Father, to 
feel his supporting arm underneath you, and 
to hear his voice speaking to you in the 
silence and saying : ' ' Fear not ; when thou 
passest through the waters I will be with 
thee ; and through the rivers, they shall not 
overflow thee ; when thou walkest through 
the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither 
shall the flame kindle upon thee ; for I have 



THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 17 

redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy 
name; thou art mme." This is the promise 
of the Lord to all who seek him in the time 
of need. He is a sure refuge and defence in 
all our troubles ; our strength, our peace and 
joy, our health, our life, our all. And that 
sickness is a blessing which leads the sufferer 
to the experimental test of this truth, and 
reveals to him that his highest life, his su- 
preme good, is in God, and lies infinitely 
above the health or sickness, the life or death, 
of the body. 

Lean, then, upon the strong arm of the 
Father, and let your soul open out toward 
him in holy communion, as the fainting flower 
opens to receive the welcome and refreshing 
rain. Let this affliction draw you unto him 
through Christ, and you will find all and 
more than you seek. In the quiet of your 
chamber, in the secret sanctuary of the spirit, 
lift up the prayer of faith and trust ; and 
you will feel ere long that the peace of (xod 
is finding its way into your heart, and the 



18 THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 

grace of our Lord Jesus Christ making the 
burthen lighter and easier to bear every day. 

O there is no experience of the soul so 
sweet and comforting, so divinely beautiful, 
as that which brings us, through sorrow and 
suffering, into this close relation with our 
Heavenly Father ; and by which we are able 
to recognise the touch and pressure of his arm 
as it passes under us to hold us up in our 
weakness. To lie down upon it, and cease 
from all effort and struggle ; to feel that it 
is not your own, but God's strength that 
sustains you ; to feel a sweet calm diflfused 
through all your being, that perfect peace 
passing knowledge or expression ; to be pa- 
tient and strong under suffering, and know all 
the time that you never could feel thus by 
your own unaided eflfort ; that it is all of the 
Lord's mercy and goodness, that he helps 
you, holds you in his arms, and does every 
thing for you ; and that therefore all weari- 
ness is gone, and all the anguish of suffer- 
ing, and the bitterness of death, and nothing 



THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 19 

now can disturb you evermore. O, when this 
heavenly height is reached, however rough 
and dark the path that leads to it, we are 
thankful to have trodden it. This divine calm 
which possesses the soul, is more than an 
equivalent for all that we have suffered. 
And we feel that out of our hearts we can 
truly bless God for that sickness and pain 
which have thus brought us into the fellow- 
ship of his Spirit ; for that sorrow which has 
brightened now into everlasting peace. 

Third : This sorrow will reveal to you the 
greatness and tenderness of the Saviour's love, 
and bring you into closer sympathy with 
him ; for he was ' ' a man of sorrows and ac- 
quainted with grief," and is therefore ' ' touch- 
ed with the feeling of our infirmities," and 
''in that he himself hath suffered" he is 
able and ready to succor them that come 
to him. Hence he says, ''Come unto me 
all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and 
I will give you rest : take my yoke upon 
you, and learn of me ; for my yoke is easy, 



20 THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 

and my burden is light, and ye shall find rest 
unto your souls." There is something affect- 
ing in the thought that Jesus has trodden all 
the paths of suffering humanity, tasted every 
cup of bitterness, and at last met death in 
its most fearful form — all for us ; that he 
might know how to pity us in our grief and 
anguish, and to comfort us in our distresses, 
and how to strenscthen and encourao-e us in 
the day of death, and give us victory over 
the grave. O, how much nearer and dearer 
he seems to us on this account ; how much 
greater our confidence and affection, and how 
are we comforted and strengthened in all our 
afflictions, when we think of this sublime sac- 
rifice for our good ! 

Let this season of affliction, then, direct 
your thoughts to the meek and gentle One, 
the Divine Sufferer, ^' who was made a little 
lower than the angels for the suffering of 
death, and crowned with glory and honor, 
that he by the grace of God should taste 
death for every man." Think of him as the 



THE REVELATIONS OF SICELNESS. 21 

Comforter and the example of all who suffer ; 
and remember with what sweetness and pa- 
tience he bore his burthens, saying, meekly, 
' ' the cup which my Father giveth me shall I 
not drink it?" And remember, too, that he 
is still near to all who will call upon him; 
that now, as of old, he is '^ passing by," 
and is ready to heal and to bless every suf- 
fering soul. 

Watcher, who wakest by the bed of pain, 
While the stars sweep on in their midnight train, 
Stifling the tear for thy loved one's sake. 
Holding thy breath lest his sleep should break. 
In thy lowliest hour there's a helper nigh — 

Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. 

Fading one, with the hectic streak, 
And the veins of fire, on thy wasted cheek, 
Fearest thou the shade of the darkened vale, 
Look to the Guide who can never fail ; 
He hath trod it himself ; he will hear thy sigh — 
Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. 

Mourner who sittest in the churchyard lone 
Scanning the lines on that marble stone, 
Plucking the weeds from the grassy bed, 
Planting the rose and the myrtle instead, 
Look up from the tomb with a tearless eye — 

Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. 



22 THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 

Fourth: Sickness reveals the value of the 
Bible as a source of comfort and encourage- 
ment. There is a beautiful significance in the 
words of Walter Scott, when approaching 
death, respecting the preciousness of the Di- 
vine Scripture to the sick and dying. He 
had requested his son-in-law to read to him ; 
and, on his inquiring what book he should 
read from, the sufferer exclaimed, as he 
looked up, his face illuminated with a heav- 
enly expression, ^'What book! why, my 
dear, to one in my situation, there is but 
one book!" There is pointed truth in this. 
In the hour of our greatest need, when dis- 
ease and pain are doing their sad work on 
the burning brain and the throbbing heart, 
when the spirit and the flesh fail, and there 
is no help in man — it is not the revelations 
of science that we wait for, but the Revela- 
tions of the Gospel. It is not what the geol- 
ogist may say of earth, but what the Spirit 
says of heaven ; not the words of Plato nor 
of Bacon, but the words of Jesus and Paul, 



THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 23 

that the fainting heart welcomes as the balm 
of healing, as the sweetest and the only com- 
fort It knows. In that hour. In that condi- 
tion, truly there is but one book for us. All 
others are valuable only as they serve to 
illustrate the spirit and teachings of that, and 
help us to appropriate to our own needs its 
divine promises and consolations. 

And how rich the Bible Is in these words 
of eternal life and peace. And now that you 
are weary and distressed, this will be made 
manifest unto you, and the sacred volume 
will become a lamp to your feet and a light 
to your path, so long as you are In the valley 
of shadows. It will be to you as a new 
book, every page seemingly Illuminated with 
truth especially spoken for you; every testi- 
mony of the Father's love, every promise of 
comfort and divine assistance, coming with 
a fresh meaning, and a wonderful adapted- 
ness to your particular condition of mind 
and heart. And whatever may be the result 
of this sickness, whether you stay with us, or 



24 THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 

go to join the departed over the river, it will 
bestow one abiding blessing, if it lead you 
thus to the Fountain of Life, the wells of 
living water. And in that day thou shalt 
say, '^O Lord, I will praise thee: though 
thou hast afflicted me, yet thy chastisement 
is turned away, and thou hast comforted me. 
Behold, God is my salvation ; I will trust, 
and not be afraid : for the Lord Jehovah is 
my strength and my song ; he also is become 
my salvation. Therefore with joy will I draw 
water out of the wells of salvation." 

Go then, thou sick and weary and failing 
one, go to the word of God for strength and 
resignation. Turn over the glowing pages of 
the gospels, linger among its inspired utter- 
ances, treasure up in your heart the sweet 
sayings of Jesus ; and you will find the sick 
bed eased, the hours of pain shortened, the 
power of endurance daily increasing, and a 
calm courage and a holy peace possessing 
your soul. 



THE REVELATIONS OF SICKNESS. 25 

Of health and strength and ease bereft 
My spirit turns to Thee — 

hast thou not a blessing left, 
A blessing, Lord, for me ? 

Behold thy prisoner — loose my bonds. 

If 'tis thy gracious will, 
If not, make me. Lord, content 

To be thy prisoner still ! 

1 may not to thy house repair, 
Yet here thou surely art ; 

Lord, consecrate a house of prayer 
In my surrendered heart. 

To faith reveal the things unseen ; 

To hope the joys unfold ; 
Let love, without a veil between, 

Thy glory now behold. 
Oh ! make thy face on me to shine, 

That doubt and fear may cease ; 
Lift up thy countenance benign 

On me, and give me peace. 



II. 

'§,muam for ^Jrankfttlmss. 



If what I wish thy will denies, 
It is that thou art good and wise ; 
Afflictions which may make me mourn, 
Thou canst, thou dost, to blessings turn. 
Deep, Lord, upon my thankful breast, 
Let all thy favors be imprest ; 
And though withdrawn thy gifts should be. 
In all things I'll give thanks to thee. 

ICK, languishing and despondent, I 
lie here through the long day, and 
through the longer night, counting the 
weary hours as they drag heavily by. De- 
prived of ease and comfort, struggling with 
bodily pains, with the burning heat of the 
fever, with the protracted and exhausting 
cough of consumption, with faintness and fee- 
bleness — it is hard to bear it all with pa- 




REASONS FOR THANKFULNESS. 27 

tience and resignation. It is hard to give up 
health and business, all the duties and pleas- 
ures and welcome activities of life, and He 
down upon the bed of sickness and suffering, 
and perhaps of death. 

Yes, but after all, have I not many things 
to be thankful for? With all that I suffer, 
have I not much to comfort me? With all 
the blessings taken, are there not many moi^e 
than these left to me ? What cause for grati- 
tude, since I am sick, that I am sick at 
home, among my own kindred, surrounded 
with the familiar things and the familiar faces 
which have made such happiness for me all 
my life long. O what a difference, if this 
sickness had come upon me In a foreign land, 
or far away from home, among strangers, 
with no friends or relatives to minister to my 
wants, or speak sweet words of consolation 
and hope. 

Thanks to the merciful providence of God, 
since this affliction has come, it has come 
under circumstances so favorable, and so well 



28 REASONS FOR THANKFULNESS. 

calculated to lighten the burthen of it. What 
a comfort it is to see the dear faces of those 
I love, to hear their pleasant voices, to 
recognise their light step upon the floor, 
to know that the pain-assuaging draught is 
mixed, and held to my lips, by the hand of 
affection. How it helps me to bear my pain, 
this thoughtful kindness, this constant minis- 
tration of patient, never-tiring love ! How it 
redeems the weariness of the day, and peo- 
ples the loneliness of the night, and lights 
up the gloom of the sick chamber. And if 
I die, O how blessed it is to die among 
mine own ; to know that, as my eyes grow 
dim, their last look will be of those ever dear 
to me ; and that the last sounds which will 
linger in my failing ears, will be the sweet 
voices of the beloved who have given to 
my life all its beauty and joy. O God, my 
heavenly Father, I thank thee for these mer- 
cies ; and though in thy wisdom thou hast 
afflicted me, and taken back some of thy gifts, 
I will not forget the many precious blessings 



REASONS FOR THANKPULNESS. 29 

left. ''Because thy loving kindness is better 
than life, my lips shall praise thee." 

There is another cause for thankfulness, 
blending in with that first named, which also 
reveals to me the fact, that this sickness is not 
wholly evil. Hitherto, absorbed in my own 
affairs, anxious for my own interest, and 
blessed with health, I have thought too little 
of others, — the sick and suffering and dying. 
I have seldom^visited the house of sorrow and 
mourning, seldom spoken a word of sympathy 
to those in affliction. And I have not been 
prompt to offer my services in such cases, and 
to give heed to the many little duties and 
attentions, which are so grateful to the sick, 
and serve so much to lighten the gloom, and 
lift up the weight of suffering. 

I am thankful that my affliction has taught 
me the worth of these things, and shown me 
what comfort there is to the sick in words 
of kindly remembrance and inquiry, in the 
timely visit, in' the delicate attentions of 
friends, in the generous fellowship of a loving 



m 
30 REASONS FOR THANKFULNESS. 

spirit ; in a word, in the sweet consciousness 
that all around there are hearts beating in 
every pulse with sympathy, with earnest 
wishes and prayers for our welfare. I know 
now what inspirations of hope and courage 
and cheerfulness there are in these thino^s. 
This baptism of affliction has quickened my 
soul into new and tender relations to all who 
suffer. Hereafter the sick man is twice my 
brother — by the ties of a common humanity, 
and by the fellowship of a common sorrow. 
Hereafter my feet shall be swift to do the 
offices of love, and to repay to others sick the 
debt of kindness laid on me. The word of 
cheer, the friendly visit, the timely remem- 
brance, shall not be wanting from me to 
make the weary hours of the sick chamber 
pass quickly, to lay the heavy pains to rest, 
to quiet the agitated nerves, and close the 
long sleepless eyes in soothing slumbers. 

Surely it is something to be thankful for, 
even if it come through sickness ; this knowl- 
edge of myself; this quickened sense of my 



REASONS FOR THANICFULNESS. 31 

dependence on the kindness and sympathy of 
friends, and the consequent duty I owe to 
others ; this sweet experience of the comfort 
there is in human sympathy in the day of dis- 
tress ; and the divine joy there is in minister- 
ing to the afflicted, in following Christ in his 
work of mercy among the sick and suffering. 

And then, what reason have I to be thank- 
ful, that in the providence of God, the lines 
of life have fallen to me in a land of Chris- 
tian knowledge and faith ; that through all 
this weary sickness I have the comforting 
promise of the Gospel, that whatever of suf- 
fering is laid upon me will in some way turn 
to my good. What should I do in this day 
of darkness and distress, if I felt that all my 
trials and sorrows, that all events indeed, 
came of chance, without order or law, without 
any beneficial purpose or end ! But now, 
thanks to the merciful and loving Jesus, I am 
consoled by the confident assurance I have, 
that all things are subject to the dif ine rule ; 
that there is no chance nor accident in my 



32 REASONS FOR THANKFULNESS. 

afflictions, but that all, past, present and to 
come, is directed by infinite benevolence, and 
that therefore every pain and grief of mine 
will finally shape itself into some form of 
blessing. 

O, then, cannot I bear patiently, sustained 
by this inspiring truth? And, however dark 
the night, shall I not walk forward cheer- 
fully, with this promise of the Lord as a shin- 
ing light in my soul, illuminating all the path 
before me ? 

Yes, in my sickness I will thankfully re- 
member the blessings of home and kindred ; 
I will be devoutly grateful for the ministra- 
tions of love and friendship ; and, whatever 
my sufferings, I will rejoice in the comforting 
promises of the Father, that all shall end 
well. 

All as God wills, who wisely heeds 

To give or to withhold, 
And knoweth more of all my needs 

Than all my prayers have told ! 
Enough that blessings undeserved 

Have marked my erring track ; 
That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, 

His cha5;tening turned me bnck. — 



REASONS FOR THANKFULNESS. 33 

That more and more a ProTidence 

Of love is understood, 
Making the springs of time and sense 

Sweet with eternal good ; 
That care and trial seem at last 

Through Memory's sunset air, 
Like mountain ranges overpast 

In purple distance fair, — 

That death seems but a covered way j 

Which opens into light, 
Wherein no blinded child can stray 

Beyond the Father's sight, — 
And so the shadows fall apart, 

And so the west winds play ; 
And all the windows of my heart 

I open to the day. 



III. 

^O0h in ^farl. 



One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists, one only, — an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Disturbed or sad, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power, 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good. 

O evil is wholly evil ! This is one of 
, i. the bright gleams of light that stream 
in upon all nights, even the darkest. 
No evil is wholly evil. Behind the blackest 
cloud the sun shines — or the stars. All our 
trials and sorrows have elements of good in 
them ; hopeful features w^hich smile upon us 
in gentle reproof of our unbelief and discour- 
agement. Now and then, as the swift shuttle 




GOOD IN EVIL. 35 

passes, we catch glimpses of bright threads 
weaving themselves into the dark web of our 
affliction. Hidden relations of events are dis- 
covered in this or that direction, where we did 
not look for them. And, by and by, the fu- 
tiu-e good, which at first was shut out by the 
present and nearer evil, begins to lift itself 
into the line of vision ; and we feel our faith 
increased, and confirmed at last, in the ever 
joint action of the infinite Power and Love 
of the father. 

Long time ago I wrote thus ; and, as the 
years drift by, and the sphere of observation 
and experience is extended, and I discover 
how singularly the threads of good and evil, 
joy and sorrow, sickness and health, cross and 
recross as warp and w^oof in the loom of life, 
and intertwine and weave up into the web of 
destiny; the more firmly do I believe this, 
the greater is my confidence in that wisdom, 
which ordains evil as well as good, which 
orders with equal mercy darkness and light, 
suffering and rejoicing, death and life. Day 



36 GOOD IN EVIL. 

by day, and year by year, the divine fact 
comes into clearer light, that all evil has a 
sunny side to it, that sorrow is the twin-sister 
of joy, and the grave only the vestibule to the 
temple of immortal life. 

*' There is no sorrow, friends, but it has still 
Some soul of sweetness in it ; there's no ill 
But comes from Him who made it, and is good 
As fruit in season, leaf in budding wood." 

This affliction that has come upon you, this 
sickness that consumes your strength, and 
wastes the body, and withdraws you from the 
activities of life, is not in vain, not without 
some purpose of good for you. Receive it in 
a trusting spirit ; improve it in lifting up the 
soul to God. Let the weary hours of weak- 
ness and pain he lightened by thoughts of 
heavenly things, by sweet communion with 
the Holy Spirit ; by recollections of past 
events, which have revealed the good there is 
always hidden away in evil, which have shown 
the benefit there is in every grief or trial that 
the Lord appoints ; by numbering to yourself 



GOOD IN ETIL. 37 

the occasions in your own life, and in the life 
of others, when you have seen how much 
better it was that God's will was done rather 
than yours or theirs. 

A thousand times have I repeated to myself 
these lines, whose truth is equal to their 
beauty : 

*' With patient heart thy course of duty run, % 

God nothing does, nor suffers to he done, 
But thou wouldst do thyself, if thou couldst only see 
The end of all he does, as well as he." 

Nothing seems to me more certain than 
this. With all my soul I believe that if we 
could see the end of all we suffer as clearly as 
God sees it, we should not lift a finger to 
change it. However deeply the iron might 
enter the soul, however bitter the cup of our 
afflictions, how great soever the wreck of our 
hopes and plans on the sea of adversity, — 
still, if we could understand the purposes of 
God, the exact thing he means to accomplish 
by our trials, the thing he is doing we should 
do ourselves. 



38 GOOD IN EVIL. 

In the depth of his distress Jacob exclaims : 
<'Me have ye bereaved, Joseph is not, and 
Simeon is not, and now ye will take Ben- 
jamin away — all these things are against 
me." Poor old man ! These things seem to 
be against you, but they are not. They are 
all for you ; they are the very things you 
would do yourself, if you only knew the sig- 
nificance of them. They are not evil, but 
good ; not death, but life to you and yours. 
What a lesson of humility and faith this story 
teaches : Joseph pleading in anguish of soul 
with his brethren, that they will not make 
him governor of Egypt, and the savior of his 
family and kindred ! Jacob bitterly weeping 
over an affliction, which was only the angel 
of God waiting to restore to him his long lost 
son ! How ought these to rebuke our mur- 
muring and impatience, w^hen sickness, or 
bereavement, or any kind of misfortune falls 
to our lot. 

So we misjudge the ways of God, and mis- 
call his providences. The names we give to 



GOOD IN EVIL. 39 

the divine methods and agencies make sad 
confusion of the truth. We call this good 
and that evil to-day ; but to-morrow reveals 
our mistake, corrects our judgment, and 
compels a change in our vocabulary. 

The boy of ten, who sees happiness only in 
kites and balls, in sleds and skates, thinks it 
a sore affliction to be shut up in the hated 
school-house, under a stern master, compelled 
to learn the hardest lessons — this to him is 
the greatest evil you can put upon him. But, 
as the years flow on, and bear him forward 
into the activities of life, he finds that the 
greatest evil at ten, has changed into the 
greatest good at thirty, and opened for him 
ways of wealth and usefulness, and set him in 
the high places of honor and power. 

I think it is so with all our trials — yea, 
with all the evils of our world — that there is 
a germ of good in them, which by and by 
buds and blossoms into fruit. We do not like 
much the black and smutty charcoal, but it is 
what nature makes her diamonds of. The 



40 GOOD IN EVIL. 

evil we suffer is only the black and sooty car- 
bon, which, when the necessary conditions 
are present, is converted into good, into the 
brilliant and valuable diamond. We ought, 
therefore, to be very slow in our judgment of 
the ways of Providence. 

What we need most of all, what you need, 
my suffering friend, is. Trust in God. Try to 
learn this lesson, and to apply it now in the 
days of your tribulation, when the body sinks 
under disease, and the spirit faints ; when 
your hopes grow dim, and the clouds begin to 
drift between you and the setting sun, and a 
darkness as of the night gathers about you. 
How beautiful was the simple faith of our 
childhood, when, however dark the night, 
however devious the way, we were ready to 
put our hand into the hand of father or 
mother, and walk forward with unfaltering 
heart, confident they would lead us to the 
shelter and security of our dear home. 

Accept and cherish the same sweet and 
childlike faith in God, who is also our 



GOOD IN EVIL. 41 

Father. The path, by which he brings 'you 
on your way, may sometimes lead out into 
the darkness and the desert, may, as in the 
case of Joseph, lead down into Egypt ; but 
forget not that God dwells in the prisons and 
palaces of Egypt, as well as in the tents of 
Jacob ; that he is present everywhere, and 
always, as a Refuge and a Comforter. Be 
patient and hopeful, therefore ; remembering 
that, however this sickness may terminate, the 
hour approaches, — » 

*' When all the vanities of Life's brief day 
Oblivion's hurrying hand shall sweep away ; 
And all its sorrows, at the wakening blast 
Of the archangel's trump, shall be as shadows past." 



-^44#=^ 



IV. 



There are briers besetting every path, 

That call for patient care ; 
There are trials and griefs in every lot, 

And a need for earnest prayer — 
But a lowly heart that leans on Thee, 

Is happy everywhere. 

S long as everything goes prosperously 
with us, no losses nor calamities, no 
sickness nor death, nor unusual expo- 
sure to death of those we love, it is not a dif- 
ficult thing to be cheerful, light-hearted and 
happy. It is very easy, under such circum- 
stances, to rebuke the questionings and mur- 
murings of those over whom the great water- 
floods of afiliction have rolled ; and who, in 
spite of all their faith, cannot keep back the 




THE BLESSING OF A CHEERFUL PIETY. 43 

angulsh-cry of the Saviour, — "My God, my 
God ! why hast thou forsaken me." 

But let any of this class suddenly come into 
any kind of trouble ; let some business mis- 
fortune bring them front to front with com- 
parative poverty ; or disease, attended with 
great bodily suffering, fall to their lot ; or 
death strike down some beloved member of 
the family circle — oh, then it is quite another 
thing. They can be very eloquent in urging 
upon others the lesson of trust and resignation 
under affliction ; but when they go down into 
the deeps, then it is their sorrow, and not 
another's. Then they talk very differently, 
and feel far otherwise than when the evil 
came to some acquaintance or neighbor, or 
even some friend. They learn the truth of 
the saying so often repeated, that it is 
easier always to bear other people's troubles 
than to bear one's own. Indeed, it is always 
easier to commend faith and submission to 
others, than to realize the blessing in our own 
souls. And yet the realization of this blessing 



44 THE BLESSING OF 

in our own souls, is not an impossible thing. 
It is the product, largely, of Christie doc- 
trine and knowledge, of Christian effort and 
culture. It is the harvest-sheaves of wheat 
which all can sow, since God has placed the 
rich seed grain within reach of all. 

I do not intend by this universal phrasing 
of the thought, to be understood as saying 
there are not original and constitutional dif- 
ferences in men in regard to this matter. All 
men are not alike in their religious and moral 
structure, any more than in their mental ca- 
pacities, or in bodily strength and size. The 
Creator has made them different. Two men, 
of equal spiritual life and culture, having the 
same theological belief, the same confident 
faith in the Divine direction of all human 
affairs, will not bear the same trouble with the 
same serenity and uncomplaining patience — 
and only because in physical constitution, in 
nervous irritability, they are wholly unlike ; 
created unlike in the beginning, and not so 
because of any spiritual training by the one, 
or any neglect of it by tlie other. 



A CHEERFUL PIETY. 45 

Now, one of these men will face a great 
misfortune, or bear a long and painful sick- 
ness, or meet death with firmness and compo- 
sure ; and those beholding him set him down 
as a model Christian, a perfect religious man. 
The other will be overcome by these trials, 
he will bow to them as a reed in the wind ; 
his courage fails him, his nerves betray him, 
the physical man, the sensitive body, in its 
tremor and weakness conquers the spirit, and 
his words and manner convince the superficial 
observer that he is wholly wanting in faith 
and trust toward God, in religious life and 
personal piety. 

And yet nothing could be farther from the 
truth. It is not the man's faith or piety that 
are at fault, but his nerves, his excessively 
delicate and irritable physical constitution, 
played upon and swayed hither and thither 
by bodily pains or mental troubles, as the 
leaves of the forest are seized and swept to 
and fro by the fickle winds. I knew inti- 
mately a man of this sort, years ago, now in 



46 THE BLESSING OF 

heaven. He was possessed of an excellent 
mind, cultivated by extensive reading, as 
truly Christian in life and spirit as any one I 
ever ministered to. But he was of a most 
sensitive temperament, extremely nervous, 
and keenly alive to every disturbing influence. 
It is easy to see how a protracted and very 
painful disease would affect such a person.- 
And the last days of his life were clouded to 
many of his friends (not to me who knew him 
so well,) by exhibitions of fretful impatience, 
complaints and accusations, and an absence 
of that confidence and reconciliation to the 
Divine will, which his previous life authorized 
us to expect. But with a nervous system 
utterly shattered by his sufferings, I knew all 
this was to be set down against the physical 
and not against the spiritual man. Other 
men, with not half his faith or piety, but with 
nerves of wrought iron, had met their trial 
with twice the courage and steadiness. I 
knew the soul was not faithless, but only that 
it could not control the quivering nerves, nor 



A CHEERFUL PIETY. 47 

master the anguish of the frail and sensitive 
body. And we could see this in the seasons 
of lengthened relief and quiet, when the spirit 
was lifted for a moment out of the bodily 
wreck, and uttered itself in the old familiar 
dialect of holy trust and sweetest resignation. 

Let those, therefore, who are gifted with 
strong nerves, as well as blessed with strong 
faith, be patient with such as are overwhelmed 
by their troubles, remembering the words of 
Paul, — ''For who maketh thee to differ from 
another ? and what hast thou that thou didst 
not receive ? now if thou didst receive it, why 
dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received 
it? .... Therefore judge nothing before 
the time, until the Lord come, who both will 
bring to light the hidden things of darkness, 
and will make manifest the counsels of the 
hearts ; and then shall every man have praise 
of God." — 1 Cor. iv. 

But we must be careful not to justify our 
impatience and complaint by forcing this view 
of the subject to an extreme. A just allow- 



48 THE BLESSING OF 

ance should certainly be made for constitu- 
tional differences among men ; for an original 
endowment, in one case, of strength and en- 
durance entirely independent of faith and 
piety, and in another, for a frail and nerveless 
body, which is forever dragging the soul 
down into its own helplessness and gloom. 
Still we must not forget that, with multitudes 
having equal original gifts and opportunities, 
the results are widely different — and this 
from neglect of religious culture, from want 
of self-government, from cherishing an un- 
happy, dissatisfied and querulous temper. 

Giving to the exceptions named their full 
weight in the explanation, it is nevertheless 
true that faith and piety, and the discipline of 
a Christian spirit and character, are a most 
important help to us in the day of trial — in 
misfortunes, in sickness, in bereavement, in 
our own death. It is nevertheless true that 
we can lighten our burthens, ov otherwise, 
just according to the spirit in which we accept 
them. The same sickness or trouble to one 



A CHEERFUL PIETY. 49 

person, fretful, resistant, disposed to see 
every thing, every event, on the wrong side, 
having no living faith in Providence, will 
press on him as with the weight of a moun- 
tain ; but to another cheerful, patient, trying 
to make the best of everything, trying to see 
God in everything, it will be only as a hand- 
ful of feathers. 

It is the part of true wisdom, therefore, to 
cultivate a cheerful, hopeful disposition. By 
always looking on the dark side, and hunting 
up evil things, a man can soon change the 
order of his thoughts, can soon beget a sour 
and disagreeable temper, and make himself as 
unhappy as he is offensive to others, and 
unjust to his Maker. On the other hand, the 
man who is always seeking for sunny spots, 
for green grass and flowers, is sure to find 
them; and to find, also, that the light and 
fragrance will creep, by some subtle process, 
into all the shadows of his heart — till by and 
by his whole life comes out into the sunshine, 
in spite of his misfortunes and sorrows. 
4 



50 THE BLESSING OF 

The truth is, there is always sunshine some- 
where. There is always something to be 
thankful for, even in the darkest life. We 
should never let the taking away of one bles- 
sing, however precious, blind us to the value 
of those that are left. We should not forget 
in the sickness of to-day, the many days 
and years in which we have enjoyed perfect 
health, and been free from pain, and able to 
go about our daily duties without fatigue or 
suffering. How few the days of storm and 
rain, compared with those that are calm and 
sunny. How short the seasons of bodily 
distress and anguish, contrasted with the long 
periods of ease and comfort. We should 
think of this more than we do. It would 
teach us patience and resignation. If we 
count the days in which we are absolutely 
miserable, we shall be surprised to find how 
few they are compared with our complaints. 
And if we faithfully register every day in the 
year which brings us some sweetness, some 
enjoyment or some comfort, we shall feel 



A CHEERFUL PIETY. 51 

rebuked for our many unjust accusations 
against our Heavenly Father, when we find 
how near the register comes to three hundred 
and sixty-five ! 

That was the true spirit of gratitude and 
submission exhibited by an aged saint, who 
in his poverty thanked God for a crust of 
bread, and the hope of heaven beside ; and 
who, when pitied for his unprotected lone- 
liness, replied, '^I am never alone; Faith 
shuts my door at night, and Mercy opens it in 
the morning." It is wonderful how a pleas- 
ant disposition will lighten our burthens, and 
sweeten the wormwood of life. It is very 
beautiful, even when we are despondent our- 
selves, to see how the gloom of a sick cham- 
ber is sometimes illumined by the light of a 
cheerful piety, which will not let go its hold 
on God. The obscurest sufferer in this way 
becomes transfigured as with the glory of the 
Lord, and his faith and patience and sweet 
humility come to us with a ministry of reproof 
for our ingratitude toward Him, who has said 



52 THE BLESSING OF 

for our encouragement and comfort, ''I will 
never leave thee nor forsake thee?" 

A truly religious spirit takes up this prom- 
ise of the Lord, and, in sickness and affliction, 
makes it the rod and the staff whereon it 
leans ; and by help of which it is rested and 
comforted, in its weary walk through the 
valley of shadows. But, as said, ^ this spirit 
of reverent submission and affectionate confi- 
dence toward God, is not the product of a 
miracle wrought in the soul by the Holy 
Spirit ; but the fruitage of seed which we our- 
selves must sow. Some effort is needed on 
our part. The promise of peace is conditional 
upon our seeking it. Without a knowledge 
of God w^e cannot trust him ; and know^l- 
edge is the reward of labor, of study. If we 
never seek, we shall never find. ''Ask, and 
ye shall receive ; seek, and ye shall find ; 
knock, and it shall be opened unto you." 

Knowledge of God and of his love for us 
comes first, and then confidence in his wise 
and beneficent direction of all our troubles 



A CHEERFUL PIETY. 53 

and trials; and then, a calm and cheerful 
resignation to his will ; and then, an abiding 
peace which no sorrow, no evil can disturb — 
these are the natural sequences, linking Into 
each other as cause and effect. 

What can these anxious cares avail, 
These never-ceasing moans and sighs ? 

What can it help us to bewail 
Each painful moment as it jflies ? 

Our cross and trials do but press 

The heavier for our bitterness. 

Leave God to order all thy ways, 

And hope in him whate'er betide ; 
Thoul't find him in the evil days 

Thy all sufficient strength and guide. 
Who trusts in God's unchanging love, 
Builds on the rock that nought can move. 



V. 



ds l^g Pi0MS« m #rjJn'? 



Lord may I "be ready when death shall come, 

May I be ready to hasten home ! 

No earthward clinging, no lingering gaze, 

No strife at parting, no sore amaze ; 

No flitting shadows to dim the light 

Of angel pinions winged for the flight ; 

No cloud-like phantoms to fling a gloom 

'Twixt heaven's bright portals and earth's dark tomb - 

But sweetly, gently, to pass away 

From the world's dim twilight into day. 



^^E ought always to live in such way 
as to be prepared for whatever the 
day may bring forth. Not that we 
should ever be living in the shadow of death, 
or in constant expectation of sickness or ca- 
lamity of any sort ; but with wise regard to 
the possibility of misfortune, sickness, be- 
reavement or death, at any moment. If we 



SET THY HOUSE IN ORDER. 55 

keep this in mind, and reflect upon it as a 
possibility at any time, as a certainty some 
time, we shall be careful to set our house in 
order, and so dispose our spiritual and tem- 
poral affairs, that we shall never be surprised 
or alarmed, however sudden the event. 

Tliis present sickn'ess of yours has come 
upon you perhaps quite unexpectedly. Doubt- 
less, could you have foreseen it, you would 
have finished many things now left incom- 
plete ; you would have brought your business 
into more compact form, arranged your pa- 
pers, balanced your books, and gathered up 
all the loose threads in the web of your plans 
and purposes, which this sudden sickness has 
sadly entangled and deranged. 

You do not know, no one can tell you, how 
this sickness will terminate. It may be that 
God, in his gracious mercy, will give you 
safe recovery ; and it may be that, in equal 
mercy, he will call you to bid the world a 
final adieu. At any rate, if you recover from 
this sickness, you step back from the open 



56 SET THY HOUSE IN ORDER. 

grave only to approach it again in a few 
years, or a few months, perhaps. 

Are you prepared for either issue ? Is the 
soul ready for the change, strong in its faith, 
clear in its vision^ Have you no errors to 
correct? no wrongs to redress? no short- 
comings to regret ? no ^ins to repent of ? are 
your worldly affairs disposed according to 
your wishes ? are there no last things you de- 
sire to do? no last words of direction and 
counsel you need to speak ? In a word : Is 
your house in order? If so, then happy are 
you, for no sickness can surprise you into con- 
fusion ; and death, however sudden, cannot 
alarm you. 

There is no duty a man owes to himself^ or 
to his family and those who love him, so sacred 
and binding as this perfect preparedness for 
sudden sickness and death. Since we never 
know when they may come, we should never 
be in any other than a state of readiness to 
meet them. The true Christian proves him- 
self such by being ever ready, ever prepared 



SET THY HOUSE IN ORDER. 57 

in all respects, whether as regards himself, 
those dependent on him, or the world at large. 
He lives every day mindful of the fact that he 
may be prostrated by disease, or come to his 
death by some sudden calamity ; and there- 
fore, for this very reason, passes through life 
cheerfully and composedly, knowing that he is 
ready, ready to live or to die, as to the Lord 
may seem best. 

Therefore, in the fitting words of Zschokke, 
' ' Prepare thy soul that it may be ready to 
depart at any moment ; and see to it that thou 
fulfil day by day every duty toward those de- 
pendent on thee, and toward thy fellow-men. 
Do not flatter thyself with the hope that thou 
wilt have time during a long and lingering 
illness to put thy house in order. 

' ' Who knows what his end may be ? Who 
can in any way foretell whether he may 
not be cut off by some untoward accident? 
Therefore, prepare thy house, keep thy do- 
mestic affairs, thy worldly concerns, in order, 
so that, if thou be called away suddenly from 



58 SET THY HOUSE IN ORDER. 

the midst of thy friends, everything shall be 
found after thy dissolution arranged with such 
perfect care, that there shall be no neglected 
parts, no confusion. The praise of the living 
will follow thee ; the blessings of thy loved 
ones will reach thee in the eternal abodes ; 
thou wilt have fulfilled one of the most sacred 
duties towards those who are bound to thee by 
the ties of blood. We may always take it for 
granted, that he who kept his domestic affairs 
in order was found prepared in those more 
important matters also that lay between him 
and God. Live and act each day so that 
after thy death, were it even to take place the 
next minute, thy family shall not be left in 
want, and no blame shall attach to thy name. 
For the good name of the departed must ever 
be the most blessed inheritance to those he 
leaves behind. Arrange thy aflfairs so that 
they may at any moment be laid before the 
eyes of strangers, as is always more or less 
the case after our demise. 
- ' ' Prepare thy house ! If thou leadest at all 



SET THY HOUSE IN ORDER. 59 

times a life of piety, innocence, benevolence, 
full of active well-doing, and free from hatred 
or anger, such as Jesus thy Saviour taught 
thee, then sudden death can only be to thee a 
sudden benefit. Why shouldst thou dread to 
appear before God ? Art thou not ever in his 
presence? Hast thou not been, even from thy 
birth, one of his children, whom he holds in 
his arms, whom he watches over and pro- 
tects ? He knows thy short-comings ; but he 
knows also thy earnest efforts to correct them. 
He sees also the honest fight which, in order 
to be worthy of him, thou fightest against the 
temptations to sin ; he sees how often thou 
hast resisted and overcome thy tendencies to 
avarice or sensual enjoyment; he witnesses 
thy endeavors to make amends for every fault 
by noble actions. Ought a child to fear to 
appear before its loving parent, even though it 
have not yet conquered all its faults? Has 
not Jesus revealed to us the infinite mercy of 
the Father in all its beauty? Has he not 
given us assurances of his grace and his for- 
giveness ? " 



60 SET THY HOUSE IN ORDER. 

Fear not, then ; but diligently ordering all 
thy worldly affairs, and walking after the ex- 
ample, and In the spirit, of thy Lord and 
Master, be prej)ared and waiting for the voice 
of the Lord. The measure of thy duties 
filled, the work given thee finished, the les-^ 
sons of earth all learned, thou wilt be ready, 
when that voice comes to thee, to answer as 
the ' ' child Samuel " answered to the heavenly 
call — '^Here am I; speak. Lord, for thy 
servant heareth." 

The bird let loose in Eastern skies, 

Returning fondly home, 
Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies 

Where idle warblers roam ; 
But high she shoots through air and light, 

Above all low delay, 
Where nothing earthly bounds her flight, 

Nor shadow dims her way 

So grant me, God, from every snare 

Of sinful passion free. 
Aloft through faith's serener air 

To hold my course to thee — 
No sin to cloud, no lure to stay 

My soul, as home she springs ; 
Thy sunshine on her joyful way, 

Thy freedom on her wings. 



VI. 

JitspireiJ lltoitatrons for % Skk 



Father, — draw me after thee, 

So shall I run and never tire ; 
Thy presence still my comfort be. 

My hope, my joy, my sole desire ; 
Thy spirit grant ; — for neither fear 
Nor sin can come, while that is near. 

^HE Lord is my light and my salvation ; 
whom shall I fear? the Lord is the 
strength of my life ; of whom shall I 
be afraid ? For in the time of trouble he shall 
hide me in his pavilion : in the secret of his 
tabernacle shall he hide me ; he shall set me 
upon a rock. 

In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. In 



62 INSPIRED MEDITATIONS FOR 

the day of trouble I will call upon thee ; 
for thou wilt answer me. When I remember 
thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee 
in the night watches ; How precious are thy 
thoughts unto me, O God ! how great is the 
sum of them ! If I should count them, they 
are more in number than the sand : when I 
awake, I am still with thee. 

Thus will I bless thee while I live : I will 
lift up my hands in thy name. For thou 
Lord art good, and ready to forgive ; and 
plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon 
thee. 



Lord God of my salvation, I have cried 
day and night before thee : Let my prayer 
come before thee ; incline thine ear unto my 
cry ; For my days are like a shadow that de- 
clineth ; and I am withered like grass. 

1 am counted with those that go down to 
the grave ; I am as a man that hath no 
strength : For thou hast laid me in the lowest 
pit, in darkness, and in the deeps. Thou 



THE SICK CHAMBER. 63 

hast aflSIcted me with all thy waves. Mine 
eye mourneth by reason of affliction : Lord I 
have called daily upon thee, I have stretched 
out my hands unto thee. 

I am afflicted and ready to die : why hidest 
thou thy face from me? Look upon my 
affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins. 

Hear me, O Lord, for thy loving-kindness 
is good : turn unto me according to the multi- 
tude of thy mercies. And hide not thy face 
from thy servant ; for my soul is full of trou- 
bles, and my life draweth nigh unto the 
grave. 

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy 
water-spouts : all thy waves and thy billows 
are gone over me. 



Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and 
why art thou disquieted within me ? hope thou 
in God : for I shall yet praise him who is 
the health of my countenance, and my God. 
For his anger endureth but a moment ; but in 
his favor is life : weeping may endure for a 
night, but joy cometh in the morning. 



64 INSPIKED MEDITATIONS FOR 

I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are 
right; and that in faithfulness thou ^hast 
afflicted me. Therefore will I not fear, for I 
know in whom I have believed, and am per- 
suaded that he is able to keep that which I 
have committed unto him. 

The Lord hath chastened me sore ; but he 
hath not given me over to death. Therefore 
I shall not die, but live, and declare the 
works of the Lord. 

I will go into thy house with praise offer- 
ings : I will pay thee my vows, which my lips 
have uttered, and my mouth hath spoken, 
when I was in trouble. 

So wilt thou recover me, and make me to 
live. For the grave cannot praise thee, death 
cannot celebrate thee. What profit is there 
in my life when I go down to the gl^ave? 
Shall the dust praise thee ? shall it declare thy 
truth? The living, the living, he shall praise 
thee, as I do this day : the father to the chil- 
dren shall make known thy truth. 

Nevertheless, O Father ! if this cup may 



THE SICK CHAMBER. 65 

not pass from me except I drink it, thy will 
be done. The cup which my Father hath 
given me, shall I not drink it? The spirit 
indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. The 
flesh and the heart faileth, but God is the 
strength of my 'heart, and my portion forever. 

The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not 
want. He maketh me to lie down in green 
pastures ; he leadeth me beside the still wa- 
ters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me 
in the paths of righteousness for his name's 
sake. Yea, though I walk through the Val- 
ley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no 
evil ; for Thou art with me : thy rod and thy 
staff* they comfort me. 

I am continually with thee : thou hast hold- 
en me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide 
me with thy counsels, and afterward receive 
me to glory. Therefore return unto thy rest, 
O my soul ; for the Lord hath dealt bounti- 
fully with thee. 
5 



VII, 

^xbxm €onBahiwnn for t|^^ Sirk. 







In suffering be thy love my peace ; 

In weakness be thy grace my power ; 
And when the stoims of life shall cease, 

God ! in that important hour, 
In death as life be thou my guide, 
And bear me through its whelming tide. 

^UIVIBLE yourselves under the mighty 
hand of God, that he may exalt you in 
due time ; Casting all your care upon 
him, for he careth for you. Like as a father 
pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them 
that fear him. For he knoweth our frame ; 
he remembereth that we are dust. 

His eyes are upon the ways of man ; he 
seeth all his goings ; and he Avill not lay upon 
man more than is rio-ht. Thou^^h he cause 



DIVINE CONSOLATIONS FOR THE SICK. 67 

grief, yet will he have compassion accordijig 
to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth 
not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of 
men. 

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. 
He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing 
precious seed, shall doubtless come again 
with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. 



Beloved, think it not strange concerning 
the fiery trial which is to try you, as though 
some strange thing happened unto you ; But 
rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of 
Christ's sufferings, that when his glory is 
revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding 

joy- 
Despise not the chastening of the Lord ; 

neither be weary of his correction : For whom 
the Lord loveth he correcteth ; even as a 
father the son in whom he delighteth. No 
chastening for the present seemeth to be 
joyous, but grievous ; nevertheless it after- 
ward yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righte- 



68 DIVINE CONSOLATIONS 

ousness to them that are exercised thereby. 
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present 
time are not worthy to be compared with the 
glory which shall be revealed In us. 



It Is the Lord, let him do what seemeth to 
him good. In a dream. In a vision of the 
night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, In 
slumberlngs upon the bed ; Then he openeth 
the ears of men, and sealeth their Instruction, 
that he may withdraw man from his purpose, 
and hide pride from man. 

He chasteneth him also with pain upon 
his bed, and the multitude of his bones with 
strong pain ; So that his life abhorreth bread, 
and his soul dainty meat. His flesh Is con- 
sumed away, that It cannot be seen; and his 
bones that were not seen stick out. Yea, 
his soul draweth near unto the grave, and his 
life to destruction. 

If there be a messenger with him, an Inter- 
preter, one among a thousand, to show man 
his uprightness ; Then Is he gracious unto 



FOR THE SICK, 69 



liim, and saitli, Deliver lilm from going down 
to the grave : I have found a ransom. 

His flesh shall be fresher than a child's : he 
shall return to the days of his youth : He 
shall pray unto God, and he will be favorable 
unto him ; and he shall see his face with joy ; 
for he win render unto man his righteousness. 
He keepeth back his soul from the grave, and 
his life from perishing. Lo, all these things 
worketh God oftentimes with man. It Is 
good, therefore, that a man should both hope 
and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. 



Call upon me In the day of trouble : I will 
deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. I 
will strengthen thee ; yea, I will help thee ; 
yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of 
my righteousness. 

Then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot ; 
yea, thou shalt be steadfast, and shalt not fear. 
Because thou shalt forget thy misery, and re- 
member It only as waters that pass away. 

And thou shalt be secure, because there is 



70 DIVINE CONSOLATIONS 

hope ; thou shalt take thy rest in safety ; 
When thou liest down, thou shalt not be 
afraid; yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy 
sleep shall be sweet : For he giveth his be- 
loved sleep ; the Lord shall give thee rest 
from thy sorrow. 



Behold the fowls of the air, for they 
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather 
into barns ; yet your heavenly Father feedeth 
them. Are ye not much better than they? 
Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, 
and not one of them is forgotten before God ? 
But even the very hairs of your head are all 
numbered. Fear not, therefore ; ye are of 
more value than many sparrows. 



Come unto me all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take 
my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am 
meek and lowly in heart ; and ye shall find 
rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, 
and my burden is light. 



FOR THE SICK. 71 

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give 
unto you : not as the world giveth, give I 
unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, 
neither let it be afraid. 



For to this end Christ died, and rose, and 
revived, that he might be Lord both of the 
dead and the living. For none of us liveth 
to himself, and no man dieth to liimself. For 
whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and 
whether we die, we die unto the Lord : 
whether we live therefore or die, we are the 
Lord's. 

.For we know that, if our earthly house of 
this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a 
building of God, a house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens. For which 
cause we faint not ; for though our outward 
man perish, yet the inward man is renewed 
day by day : For our light affliction, which is 
but for a moment, worketh for us a far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 

For this corruptible must put on incorrup- 



72 DIVINE CONSOLxiTIONS FOR THE SICK. 

tion, and this mortal must put on immortality. 
And as we have borne the image of the 
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the 
heavenly. 

And God shall wipe away all tears, and 
there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, 
nor crying, neither shall there be any more 
pain ; for the former things are passed away ! 



Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I 
will fear no evil, for thou art with me ; thy rod and thy stafif they 
comfort me. — Psalm xxiii. 4. 



Over the river they beckon to me — 

Loved ones who've crossed to the further side ; 
The gleam of their snowy robes I see, 

Hut their voices are drowned by the dashing tide. 

And none return from those quiet shores^ 

Who cross with the boatman cold and pale ; 
We hear the dip of the golden oars, 

And catch a gleam of the snowy sail, 
And lo ! they have passed from the yearning heart, 

They cross the stream, and are gone for aye ; 
We may not sunder the veil apart 

That hides from our vision the gates of day ; 
We only know that their barques no more 

May sail with ours o'er life's stormy sea ; 
Yet somewhere 1 know, on the unseen shore, 

They watch, and beckon, and wait for me. 

And I sit and think when the sunset's gold 

Is flushing river, and hill, and shore, 
I shall one day stand by the water cold. 

And list for the sound of the boatman's oar : 
I shall watch for a gleam of the flappingr sail ; 

I shall hear the boat as it gains the strand ; 
I shall pass from sight with the boatman pale 

To the better shores of the spirit-land. 

I shall know the loved who have gone before, 
And joyfully sweet will the meeting be, 

When over the river, the peaceful river, 
The angel of Death shall carry me. 



I. 



And we only know, when we hear no more, 

As we watch for the parting breath. 
That an angel is tenderly lifting them down 

The banks of the river of death — 
Only know that their footsteps are pressing the sands 

That are washed by the hurrying waves, 
And that over the billows outstretched are their hands. 

To the shore that their brightness laves. 

/k\ NE of the most beautiful metaphors by 
n/ which we represent the passage from 
this world to another, Is that embodied 
in the title of this little volume — Over the 
ElVER. It Is not afar off, that other world ; 
It Is not beyond the waste wilderness of space, 
hidden In the Invisible abysses of the heav- 
ens — but It Is near to us, close at hand ; just 
over the river, and we are there I 



76 ''OVER THE RIVER.'' 

And the way to it is not long. It may 
sometimes be toilsome ; it may have difficult 
places, and the flinty rock and the sharp thorn 
may sometimes tear the tender feet. But the 
River is not distant — at the longest, the way 
does not stretch much beyond threescore and 
ten or fourscore miles. And then, when our 
strength fails, we embark for tlie land of rest ; 
we are borne across the river, and almost ere 
we know it, we are stepping forth upon the 
green shores of the land of the immortals. 
And then, rested and refreshed, our burthens 
laid aside, our youth renewed, what a world 
of beauty, what a life of joy opens before us ! 

And there are our companions too, they 
who crossed the river before us ; the beloved, 
the beautiful, who wait for us on the other 
shore. Knowing of our coming, they leave 
all else to come down to the river's bank, that 
they may be the first to welcome us to the 
land of the blessed, the home of the childi^en 
of God. They have wandered over the green 
fields, and through the rose-wreathed bowers, 



''OVER THE RIVER." 77 

and along the winding paths, and the hillsides 
bright with flowers ; they have breathed the 
pure airs, and rejoiced in the delicious melo- 
dies, of the Lord's Paradise — and so they 
know what joys await us, what blessedness 
unspeakable will be ours and theirs together. 

They will be the first, therefore, to greet 
us when we reach the other side — they who 
knew us and loved us here. And what a 
sweet surprise, what a new gladness to us, 
when first we open our eyes upon the realities 
of the spiritual world, to behold the dear faces 
of those who in this world were our heart's 
treasures, and who, when they went away, 
left such sorrow behind them. O the bliss of 
that meeting, the extasy of that welcome from 
the beloved over the river ! How it takes 
from the sharp pain of parting with those 
who are here^ when we know how soon we 
shall be with those who are there. And, how 
it soothes the bereaved and desolate heart to 
feel that the precious ones, who have gone, 
or are going, will find familiar spirits, dear 



78 ^'OVER THE RIVER." 

friends, waiting for them on the heavenly- 
shore, ready to lead them to the Saviour, and 
to walk with them through the many mansions 
of the Father's house. 

Ah, how much it would narrow the river of 
death, how nigh to us it would bring the 
spirit land, and those who have passed the 
boundaries of time into the life immortal — if 
we could only come always to think and feel 
in this way. And it requires only that we 
should make our faith living and earnest as 
that of the early disciples, to have this bles- 
sing realized unto our souls. They believed 
in Jesus, and in the grand revelation of life 
illustrated and confirmed by his resurrection. 
They believed that the future hinged on to the 
present, and that the river which separates 
this world from the other, is of so little 
breadth, that the farther shore is almost visi- 
ble from this side to the clear sight of Chris- 
tian faith. And sometimes, when lifted up 
by the inspirations of this faitli, and standing- 
rapt on the mount of vision, they seemed for 



^'OVER THE RIVER." 79 

a moment to get actual sight of the green 
fields and purple hills of the heavenly country. 

So it always is, or may be. Where there 
is true and living faith, there is spiritual vis- 
ion. The Christian, who makes the teachings 
of the Saviour real, who incorporates into his 
inmost being the elements of his revelations, 
makes his truth the soul's bread of life, lays 
hold upon the doctrine of immortality — he is 
gifted thereby with a new power of spiritual 
sight. And, though he may not always be 
able to pierce through the mists which lie 
along the river of death, his soul is some- 
times lifted above them, and he sees over and 
across, and gets glimpses of the splendors that 
stream up from the city of God, the heavenly 
Jerusalem. 

It is not the peculiar gift of those who stood 
near to Jesus — this far sight to the green 
fields and the blessed abodes beyond the 
swelling flood. Not only the favored ones 
who listened to truth as it fell from his lips, 
but all his disciples, in all ages of the world. 



80 *'OVER THE RIVER." 

enjoy the same privilege. We of to-day, if 
we will appropriate the life-giving doctrines 
of the Saviour, and weave them up into the 
very texture of our souls, may take the bles- 
sing and the reward — for it is the reward of 
a diligent culture of the religious nature, of 
faith in Christ and the Gospel. 

The beauties of the landscape are realities ; 
they are there in all their substance and 
attractiveness — but only the eye of the artist, 
of the true lover and diligent student of na- 
ture, takes them all in, and detects the mi- 
nute and delicate lines and touches which so 
largely make up the charm of the picture. 

So the country over the river is a reality, 
a substantive glory ; but the soul that can 
grasp it in thought and faith, must be trained 
to It by a true Christian life. The departed 
are there, radiant with happiness, rejoicing 
in the wondrous beauties of the heavenly 
Eden, coming down often to the very banks 
of the river,' flinging flowers upon its flow- 
ing bosom, which sometimes drift over to 



<*OVER THE RIVER." 81 

our shore — but he who would look across to 

where they are, must accustom his eyes to 

this work. It is not the distance, but our 

own short-sightedness, the dimness of our 

vision that hinders us. We must clear our 

eyes of the film that the world has gathered 

upon them, we must strive to clarify the 

atmosphere on this side the river ; and then, 

if not always, yet sometimes in our momeuts 

of exaltation, when the soul is lifted up by 

prayer or praise or spiritual communion, we 

may hope to catch sight of the heavenly 

heights beyond the river, and of the glorified 

forms of those who are '' children of God, 

being children of the Resurrection." 

This is what the apostle means, when he 
says "Faith is the substance of things hoped 
for, the evidence of things not seen " with the 
natural eye. He has spoken of the righteous 
men of the early times, the sainted souls who 
walked with God on earth ; and then he adds 
in beautiful phrase — ' ' These all died in 
faith, not having received the promises, but 
6 



82 "OVER THE RIVER." 

having seen them afar off, and were persuaded 
of them, and embraced them, and confessed 
that they were strangers and pilgrims on the 
earth. For they that say such things declare 
plainly that they seek a country. And truly, 
if they had been mindful of (desirous of, 
attached to) that country from whence they 
came out, they might have had opportunity to 
have returned. But now they desire a better 
country, that is an heavenly : wherefore God 
is not ashamed to be called their God, for he 
hath prepared for them a city." — Heb. xi. 

These ancient worthies, far back in the dim 
twilight of the world's morning, seeing the 
promises imperfectly, afar off, still w^alked 
forward in faith, persuaded that the good God 
who had made them, had "provided for them 
some better thing " than this life had brought 
them. They did not comprehend the fulness 
of the blessing in store for them. The Sun of 
Righteousness had not risen upon them ; and 
the mists and fogs which hung over the river 
were thick and heavy — and they could not 



''OVER THE KIVER." 83 

see across. But they believed in the better 
country, and felt that they were only sojourn- 
ers and strangers here, and, however feeble 
their vision, they still went forward with a 
patient courage, and died in the faith. 

But with the Christian it is not early morn- 
ing, but the noon of the day. With us it is 
no longer dim and ' ' afar off ; " but near unto 
us, and visible to the eye of perfect Christian 
faith. The ''evidence" and the "substance" 
are ours — If we are true to our opportunities, 
and diligently use the appointed means for 
training and strengthening our spiritual sight. 
And If those saintly men of old so mastered 
the Ills and sorrows of life, and came to the 
river's bank so calmly, with such sweet peace 
at the heart — O how ought It to be with us, 
who have seen the empty sepulchre of Jesus, 
and know the power of his Resurrection ! 

If these old patriarchs could trust In the 
promises, and "die In faith," what courage, 
what triumph should be ours who have the 
promises fulfilled unto us ! What comfort, 



84 ''OVER THE EIVER." 

what confidence, what victory for us, since 
Jesus died that he might '^ deliver them who, 
through fear of death, were all their life- 
time subject to bondage ! " — Heb. ii. 

And often I sit at the casement alone, 

And I list, if perchance I may hear, 
The flutter of sails, and the rushing of waves, 

And the dash of a gilded oar. 
As the boatman starts from his emferald caves 

To carry me down to the shore — 
And I wait for the swoop of an angel wing, 

And the clasp of an angel hand. 
For the sound of a harp and the chant of a hymn, 

And the light of the glory land. 

But, alas ! I listen and wait in vain ; 

Yet I know that my weary feet 
Shall wander ere long from the valley of pain. 

To the rivei so solemn and sweet. 
I shall go with the boatman, changeless and pale, 

And each woe that my heart has known. 
Each agonized cry, each desolate wail. 

Each fearful and piteous moan, 
Shall be swept away by the murmurous waves, 

From mf^ spirit so joyous and free. 
When I see the smiles of the lovely who wait 

On the beautiful shore for me. 



II. 



I know not the way I am going, 

But well do I know my Guide ; 
With a childlike trust I give my hand 

To the mighty Friend by my side. 

'Tis home, 'tis home, that we wish to reach ; 

He who guides us may choose the way ; 
For little we heed what path we take, 

If we're nearer home each day. 

FREQUENT and pleasing figure or 
metaphor of the Scriptures, is that 
which represents mankind as sojourn- 
ers or temporary dwellers on earth, having 
their home or permanent residence in heaven. 
David, in his prayer to the Lord, says, ''AH 
things come of Thee, and of thine own have 




86 THE EAETHLY TENT 

we given Thee. For we are strangers before 
Thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers : 
our days on earth are as a shadow, and 
there Is none abiding." — 1 Chronicles xxix. 
And Peter says, ''If ye call on the Father, 
who without respect of persons judgeth ac- 
cording to every man's work, pass the time of 
your sojourning here In fear;" that is, rever- 
ently toward this Father. Then there were 
the ancient saints who ' ' confessed that they 
were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." 

This figure furnishes abundant subject mat- 
ter for meditation, and presents a pleasing 
and consoling truth to the thought of the suf- 
ferer, and of those who have seen their be- 
loved pass on out of their sight. This is not 
our home — we are away from home in this 
world. We are travellers, sojourning here 
and there, on the way to the country beyond 
the river, our native land, from which we 
went out at birth. ''We have no continuing 
city here, but we seek one to come;" as did 
the old patriarch, who "sojourned in the land 



THE HEAVENLY HOUSE. 87 

of promise, as In a strange country, dwelling 
in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs 
with him. of the same promise — for he looked 
for a city which hath foundations, whose 
maker and builder is God." 

We should seek to be in this frame of 
mind, to feel with Abraham that we are pil- 
grims in this foreign land, journeying forward 
every day toward a city having foundations, 
the New Jerusalem on high. We ought to 
make this a subject of frequent thought, and 
cheerfully look forward to the time when we 
shall go to take possession of our heavenly 
mansion — or in the language of the apostle, 
when we shall ''come unto mount Sion, and 
unto the city of the living God, the heavenly 
Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company 
of angels, and to the general assembly and 
Church of the first-born, which are written in 
heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to 
the spirits of just men made perfect, and to 
Jesus the mediator of the new covenant." 

What a glorious company, indeed, ready to 



88 THE EARTHLY TENT 

receive us, and give us welcome when we 
come into tliat beautiful land wherein we are 
to abide forever. It is something, truly, to 
look forward to, to be glad for; something 
to give courage and strength as we travel on 
through the pleasant valleys, or the waste 
wilderness, or over the rough mountain passes 
of life. It is a sweet and soothing thought, 
that every day is one remove nearer to the 
mansions of the Blessed, where all our jour- 
ney ings shall end in the dear quiet of home; 
where all the saints of earth and of heaven, 
and all the great and good of all ages and all 
worlds, are waiting to greet us with rejoic- 
ings, to embrace us in the arms of everlasting 
love. 

Tired with our long travel, fainting with 
hunger and thirst, the hot sun of the desert 
blazing upon us, O how grateful to the sink- 
ing frame is the sight of the green and shady 
palms, that lift their tall plumes along the 
horizon, and discover to us the boundaries, 
the end at last, of the great sand waste ; the 



THE HEAVENLY HOUSE. 89 

region of grass and flowers and fruits and 
running waters, the shady nook in which 
nestles ^'the sweet, sweet home," where we 
shall find rest and peace, and all the joys 
of tenderest affection forevermore. Some one 
has said in pleasant phrase, and to be remem- 
bered by all, — 

" Here in the body pent, 

Absent from heayen I roam, 
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent 

A day's march nearer home." 

How beautiful, how comforting ! Absent 
from heaven, from home, yet every night we 
are one day's march nearer to it ; one day less 
between us and those we love, those who are 
waiting to welcome us to the city of God, and 
to bring us to the place of our rest. 

And this leads to that beautiful passage of 
Paul in 2 Corinthians v. 1 : ''For we know 
that if our earthly house of this tabernacle 
(tent) were dissolved, we have a buil^l^^g of 
God, an house not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens" — or substantially, ^'we know 



90 THE EARTPILY TENT 

when our temporary tent of the body is struck 
on earth, we have from God an eternal house ^ 
not made with hands, in the heavens." The 
beauty and force of this passage is mostly 
lost in the common translation. The contrast 
which the apostle sets out is between a move- 
able tent and a permanent house ; between a 
temporary sojourn, a journey, a pilgrimage on 
earth, and an eternal residence in heaven. 

There is allusion to the ancient Jewish 
tabernacle, which was only a temporary abode, 
and which, whenever the Israelites moved 
from the place of their sojourning on the way 
to the promised land, was dissolved^ or taken 
in pieces^ and the ark of the covenant, covered 
with its own curtains, was carried forward by 
itself. The comparison is between this hum- 
ble tabernacle or tent, thus taken to pieces 
and moved from station to station, and the 
splendid temple in which the sacred ark found 
a fix^J and permanent abode. 

So the body is the tabernacle, or tent, in 
which the spirit takes up its abode while on 



THE HEAVENLY HOUSE- 91 

its journey to the promised land ; and when 
this mortal habitation is dissolved, when the 
tent is struck by Death, then the soul is 
clothed upon with the immortal, and enters 
into its heavenly ho2ise^ the building of God, 
where, its pilgrimage ended, It will dwell 
rejoicingly forevermore ! Hence Paul says, 
' ' we desire to be clothed upon with our house 
which is from heaven ; for we that are in this 
tent (tabernacle) do groan, being burdened ; 
not that we would be unclothed, but clothed 
upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of 
life .... knowing that, whilst we are at 
home in the body, we are absent from the 
Lord — for we walk by faith and not by 
sight." 

There is no metaphor in all the Bible more 
beautiful than this, or more full of comfort to 
the weary toiler, to the heart that has been 
bereaved, to the poor sufferer who with failing 
strength and trembling step is approaching 
the end of his Life pilgrimage. At home 
in the body we are absent from the Lord ; 



92 THE EARTHLY TENT - 

dwelling in tents we have no fixed habitation, 
we are travelling onward toward the city 
where our home is to be, where our kindred 
dwell, or will by and by come to join us. 
Here everything is transient, changing, tem- 
porary — there everything is permanent, fixed 
and final. Here we meet and part ; to-day 
we are together rejoicing, and to-morrow we 
are scattered in sadness and tears. But there 
we are together always, no more separation 
nor sadness, we are at home in the many man- 
sions of our Father's house. This thought of 
the Heavenly Home, and the transfer to it of 
one after another of the family circle, till all 
our heart's treasures are on the other side, 
finds beautiful expression in the following 
passage from ''Athanasia, or Foregleams of 
Immortality : " 

''Our home is always where , our affections are. 
We sigh and wander, we vibrate to and fro, 
till we rest In that special centre where our 
deepest loves are garnered up. Then the 
heart fills and brims over with its own happi- 



THE HEAVENLY HOUSE. Do 

ness, and spreads sweetness and fertility all 
around it. Very often when the eyes are 
closing in death, and this world is shutting 
off the light from the departing soul, the last 
wish w^hieh is made audible is 'to go home.' 
The words break out sometimes through the 
cloud of delirium ; but it is the souFs deep- 
est and most central want, groping after its 
object, haply soon to find it as the clogs of 
earth clear away, and she springs up on the 
line of swift affection, as the bee with unerring 
precision shoots through the diisk of evening 
to her cell. 

''How admirable are the arrangements of 
Providence by which he gradually removes the 
home-centre from this world to the other, and 
so draws our affections to^vards the heavenly 
abodes ! We start in life an unbroken com- 
pany ; brothers and sisters, friends and lovers, 
neighbors and comrades, are with us ; there is 
circle within circle, and each one of us is at 
the charmed centre where the heart's affections 
are aglow, and whence they radiate outward 



94 THE EARTHLY TENT 

upon society. Youth is exuberant with joy 
and hope, the earth looks fair, for it sparkles 
with May-dews wet, and no shadow hath 
fallen upon it. We are all here, and we could 
live here forever. The home-centre is on the 
hither side of the river, and why should we 
strain our eyes to look beyond? But this 
state of things does not continue long. Our 
circle grows less and less. It is broken and 
broken, and then closes up again ; but every 
break and close make it narrower and smaller. 
Perhaps before the sun is at his meridian the 
majority are on the other side, the circle there 
is as large as the one here, and we are drawn 
contrariwise and vibrate between the two. A 
little longer, and we have almost all crossed 
over ; the balance settles down on the spir- 
itual side, and the home-centre is removed to 
the upper sphere." 

O child of sorrow ! cherish these pleasing 
and consoling thoughts. Take to your heart 
these gospel truths, and you shall find in 
them that peace which passeth knowledge, and 



THE HEAVENLY HOUSE. 95 

abideth forever. If the benignant face and 
venerable form of a parent is missed from 
your fireside, if the beloved companion, the 
chosen of your affections, if any of the dear 
lambs of the flock, have left you, and passed 
on over the river ; remember, they have only 
gone home, they have finished the journey 
of life, they have laid aside the worn and 
weather-beaten tent, and have entered into 
that '* building of God, not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens." No more wanderings 
for them, no more journeyings in the desert, 
no more faintness nor weariness. ''They 
shall not hunger nor thirst ; neither shall the 
heat nor the sun smite them ; for he that hath 
mercy on them shall lead them, even by 
the springs of water shall he guide them." 
Henceforth, to every one of these foot- worn 
and drooping pilgrims, the words of the sweet 
singer of Israel will be realized : ' ' The Lord 
is thy keeper, the Lord is thy shade upon thy 
right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by 
day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall 



96 THE EARTHLY TENT 

preserve thee from all evil : he shall preserve 
thy soul. The Lord shall direct thy going 
out and thy coming in, even forevermore." 

And you, too, poor afflicted soul, upon 
whom the hand of suffering has been laid so 
heavily, wasting with consumption, devoured 
with fever, racked with convulsions, or frantic 
with the streaming anguish of nerves on fire ; 
over whom the weary days and the long nights 
pass in sad procession, bringing no relief. O 
be patient, and brave, and hopeful — every 
setting sun brings you farther on your way 
through the burning sands ; every night you 
pitch your frail and shattered tent ' ' a day's 
march nearer home." Be patient and endur- 
ing, for the river is not far off now, and on 
its banks you may strike your tent for the 
last time ; and, passing over to the other 
shore, you will be welcomed by the immortal 
spirits waiting to receive you, and to lead 
you to your heavenly habitation. And there 
' ' God shall wipe away all tears from your eyes ; 
and there shall he no more deaths neither sorrow^ 



THE HEAVENLY HOUSE. 97 

nor crying^ neither shall there be any more pain : 
for the former things are passed away.^^ 

" Worn and weary, oft the pilgrim 

Ilails the setting of the sun ; 
For his goal is one day nearer, 

And his journey nearly done. 
Thus we feel when o'er life's desert, 

Heart and sandal sore we roam ; 
As the twilight gathers o'er us, 

We are one day nearer home. 

"Nearer home ! Yes, one day nearer 

To our Father's house on high — 
To the green fields and the fountains 

Of the land beyond the sky : 
For the heavens grow brighter o'er us, . 

And the lamps hang in the dome, 
And our tents are pitched still closer, 

For we'ro one day nearer home." 



^4«#»^ 



III. 



With her eyelids closed and her lips apart, 

And her arms like the marble fair, 
Crossed on her bosom, and gently prest. 
She lay, as she sank to her peaceful rest, 

In the mute repose of prayer. 
When the morning broke and we gazed again, 

A smile to her face seemed given ; 
And though our spirits were crushed and sad. 
The Christmas bells soon made us glad. 

For we knew she woke in Heaven. 

OR so he giveth his beloved sleep." 
The relation of death to sleep is recog- 
nised among all nations, in one form or 
another. Not unfrequently sleep is made the 
symbol of death ; and sometimes it is desig- . 
nated by that name. This is the case both in 
the Old and New Testament scriptures, more 
especially in the New. ''For the maid is not 




FALLING ASLEEP. 99 

dead, but sleepeth;" ''our fricud Lazarus 
sleepetli ; " " them who sleep in Jesus will 
God bring with him ; " ' ' we shall not all 
sleep, but we shall all be changed;" ''when 
Stephen had said this, he fell asleep ;" "part 
remain, but some are fallen asleep." "Since 
the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as 
they were." 

This figure is a very beautiful one, and 
not without its comforting associations. How 
grateful to the worn and tired worker, on 
whom the heat- and burthen of the day have 
fallen with exhausting power, is the coming 
on of the evening, the hour of rest and repose. 
How welcome to the fainting traveller whose 
weary feet have trodden the dusty highway 
from the early light of morning, whose 
strength is w^ell nigh spent, whose trembling 
limbs refuse to bear him farther — how wel- 
come to his longing eyes is the sight of the 
little wayside inn, where he can rest from his 
long journey, and lie down and sleep — sleep 
till the body is refreshed, and its strength re- 



100 FALLING ASLEEP. 

newed — and then, when the morning comes, 
wake again to new life, and activity, and 
enjoyment. 

To many a weary toiler in the field of the 
World, to many a fainting traveller on the 
high-road of life, this figure, which makes 
death a sleep, and the grave the couch on 
which we lie down to rest, comes with a pecu- 
liar and not unpleasant meaning. 

I knew one whose life had been shadowed 
with sorrow, who for years had struggled 
with bitter memories, and domestic trials, and 
harsh treatment, and all the straitening ills of 
poverty, who held to this thought of death 
and the hereafter with singular tenacity of 
faith and feeling. At last her griefs were 
too heavy for the exhausted mind and body 
to bear. She began rapidly to sink under 
them — and then her thoughts dwelt perpetu- 
ally on this idea of death, and she talked of 
little else. Her only thought of heaven was 
that she should rest and be at peace. ''O 
how sweet it will be to sleep ^ to be at rest — 



FALLING ASLEEP. 101 

no more to suffer, nor to toil ; no more weari- 
ness and exhaustion — to fall into placid, re- 
freshing slumber, to rest undisturbed, and 
then to wake, and still to rest ; to be free from 
care and pain, no more anguish of mind or 
heart ; to dwell in everlasting peace and tran- 
quility ! I welcome the hour when, falling 
asleep in Jesus, I shall wake in that heavenly 
home, ^* where the wicked cease from troub- 
ling, and the weary are at rest." 

So have others felt, poor sufferers, to whom 
life has been a scene of incessant toil, or of 
mental anxieties and struggles. Many a one 
has seen his cherished hopes blasted, his affec- 
tions laid waste, and all the beauty and worth 
of life swept away from him by a series of 
fast following calamities and griefs ; till at 
last, worn out, nerveless, broken in spirit, the 
prospect of a termination to these long con- 
tinued trials is grateful to the crushed heart, 
and the sleep of death is looked forward to 
with almost longing. 

And then there are those who, all their life 



102 FALLING ASLEEP. 

long, have maintained perpetual struggle with 
temptations and their own weaknesses and 
passions ; who have striven for a nobler and 
better life, and have earnestly prayed, and 
wrestled with evil, and sought with all their 
energies to rise up into the heavenly Hfe of 
holiness and triumphant virtue — but, failing 
in every effort, falling as often as they have 
risen, dragged down by the hounds of appe- 
tite, hindered and oppressed, yielding and 
unresisting, have finally, after every unsuc- 
cessful effort, sunk down again into the old 
life of weakness and sin. O what unspeaka- 
ble relief to these is the thought, that by and 
by the long warfare will be ended, the last 
battle fought, and, laying oflF the dusty armor 
of conflict, they will lie down and sleep — no 
more temptation nor struggle, no more vain 
efforts and failures, no more heart-sickness 
and discouragement and despair ; but rest 
from all this, rest in tranquil slumber through 
the quiet night — and at last, through the 
help of Jesus, disentangled from the earthly 



FALLING ASLEEP. 103 

and corruptible, and by the grace of God re- 
newed in the image of the heavenly, to rise 
when the morning comes, and go forth in the 
freedom and joy of the spiritual life ! ' 

And you, poor toilers, sinking with fatigue, 
worn in body, the fever burning through your 
veins ; yet, remembering those at home and 
the wants that beset them, bending to your 
task while strength lasts — O be patient and 
cheerful, be of good heart, for the sun is in 
the w^est, the evening approaches when your 
task will be complete, and, casting aside the 
implements of labor, you may lie down and 
sink into the arms of profound, refreshing 
sleep ! 

And you who in close garrets ply with 
weary fingers the fast flying needle, far into 
the night, while the hot head throbs with 
sharp pains, and the exhausted body trembles 
with weakness and overwork, and consump- 
tion eats in upon the secret stores of life ; 
who, day by day, and night by night, feel 
that your strength is growing less, and your 



104 FALLING ASLEEP. 

toil more difficult, and the anguish of brain 
and heart naore dreadful ; and who long for 
the sweet privilege of rest and sleep, for the 
undreaming and renewing slumbers of child- 
hood — be comforted in your sorrow, faint not 
in your weariness, for only a little longer, 
and the busy fingers, and the throbbing head 
and anxious heart, will be at rest. A little 
longer, and those heavy eyelids shall close 
over the tear-dimmed eyes, and the weary 
brain fall asleep and be at peace. A little 
longer, and you shall cease from your labors, 
and tranquilly fold your arms to rest — and 
nothing shall disturb your slumbers till the 
voice of the angel calls to you, and you wake 
in the likeness of God, wake to participate 
in the everlasting peace and blessedness of 
Heaven. 

To you, therefore, and to all who are walk- 
ing in weariness, oppressed with the burthen 
of their sorrows, or fainting with excess of 
toil, or discouraged by the long fight with 
temptation ; this metaphor, which makes of 



FALLING ASLEEP. 105 

death a sleep, and of the grave a bed of rest, 
is one full of sweet and welcome associations. 
It brings thoughts soothing and quieting to. 
the worn and worried heart, and breathes a 
serene and tranquilizing influence upon the 
sad and fainting spirit. It is a blessed thing 
to sleep when we are so utterly prostrated. 
It is an unspeakable relief to fling the weary 
body down upon the couch of rest, feeling 
that we shall be left to slumber on undis- 
turbed, till all fatigue and exhaustion have 
left us ; till nature wakens us invigorated, 
restored, with new strength and vitality cours- 
ing through all the veins, and streaming along 
all the electric nerves of life. 

And so the Holy Spirit, which is the Com- 
forter, has chosen this beautiful figure where- 
with to clothe the idea of death, that it may 
suggest cheerful and pleasant thoughts to the 
weary and tired children of earth ; that it may 
help them to walk forward with a serene trust 
to the place of their rest, assured that when 
the morning comes, they will awake refreshed. 



106 FALLING ASLEEP. 

quickened with new life and energy, the 
''children of God, being children of the 
Resurrection ! " 

My hands are weary, laboring, toiling on, 

Day after day for perishable meat : 
Oh, city of our God, I fain would rest ; 

I sigh to gain thy glorious mercy-seat. 

My garments, travel- worn and stained with dust, 
Oft rent by briers and thorns that crowd my way, 

Would fain be made, Lord my righteousness, 
Spotless and white in heaven's unclouded ray. 

My heart is weary of its frequent sin — 

Sinning, repenting, sinning still alway : 
When shall my soul thy glorious presence feel. 

And find its guilt, dear Saviour, washed away ? 

Patience, poor soul : the Saviour's feet were worn ; 

The Saviour's heart and hands were weary too ; 
His garments stained and travel-worn and old. 

His sacred eyes blinded with tears for you. 

Love thou the path of sorrow that he trod ; 

Toil on, and wait in patience for thy rest : 
city of our God, we soon shall see 

Thy glorious walls, home of the loved and blest. 



IV. 

m^t ^mih 0f i^t i0irg i^z fife of 



*' There's no such thing as death : " — 
In nature nothing dies, 
From each sad remnant of decay, 
Some forms of life arise. 

*' There's no such thing as death : " — 
'Tis but the blossom spray- 
Sinking before the coming fruit 

That seeks the Summer's ray ; — 
'Tis but the bud displaced 

As comes the perfect flower ; 
'Tis faith exchanged for sight. 
And weariness for power. 

NOTHER significant metaphor, pro- 
phetic of the condition into which 
Death introduces the soul, is found in 
the following from 1 Corinthians xv. 36 — 38 : 




108 THE DEATH OF THE BODY 

' ' That which thou sowest Is not quickened 
except It die ; and that which thou sowest, 
thou sowest not that body that shall' be, but 
bare grain, It may chance of wheat, or some 
other grain, but God giveth It a body as It 
hath pleased him, and to every seed his own 
body.'* 

The main Idea of this metaphor Is too 
plainly stated by the apostle to be mistaken. 
It Is the same which the Saviour uttered 
In almost the same words in John xll. 24 : 
'' Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a 
corn of wheat fall Into the ground and die. It 
abldeth alone ; but If It die. It bringeth forth 
much fruit." And this saying of his was In 
reference to his own death and resurrection, as 
the type, and the pledge, of the resurrection 
of mankind ; of the deliverance of the whole 
race from the bondage of corruption Into the 
glorious liberty of the Incorruptible and Im- 
mortal. 

The thought set out by this metaphor, the 
beautiful truth which It presents. Is worthy 



THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 109 

of special consideration, both for its theolog- 
ical importance, and for its comforting power 
in the most momentous hour of the soul's 
earthly history. 

Planted in the ground the sheath or body 
of the seed begins at once the process of disso- 
lution, or begins to die ; and the moment the 
process of death commences in the outward 
body of the seed, *'it may chance of wheat or 
any other grain," that same moment the pro- 
cess of the new birth commences with the 
interior germ. Nay, the death of the outer 
tegument or covering is absolutely necessary 
to this renewing process of the soul of the 
seed ; the life of the one is the product of the 
other's death. And the substance of the de- 
caying body becomes the means of developing 
the hitherto dormant powers of the germ ; the 
medium by which it receives or appropriates 
to itself the subtle forces of the soil, the 
elements of its growth into new and larger 
life. If the body did not die, the germ could 
not be quickened, as the apostle says. It is 



110 THE DEATH OF THE BODY 

only when the outer covering moulders away, 
that the external influences are able to reach 
the latent rudiments of the new life that is 
to be. 

And one cannot but be struck with amaze- 
ment, when he carefully considers the matter, 
to see what vast and astonishing powers, 
capacities and resources, lie folded up in a 
single grain of corn or wheat ; and which by 
the decomposition of the body are, as it were, 
loosed from their prison, and set free to act. 

In 1660 Sir Kenelm Digby saw a plant 
of barley, proceeding from a single grain, 
from which there came two hundred and 
forty-nine stalks, on which he counted up- 
wards of eighteen thousand grains ! But this 
is little compared with the experiments re- 
corded in 58th vol. of the Philosophical 
Transactions. On the 2d of June he sowed 
a few grains of wheat, one of the plants from 
which had thrown out so many sprouts, and 
from these so many stalks, that on the 18th 
of August he was enabled to divide it into 



THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. Ill 

eighteen parts, which he set out separately. 
By September and October these had so mul- 
tipHed that he had set out sixty- seven stalks 
for the winter. With the first growth of the 
spring this multiplication and division went 
on till at the beginning of April the number 
of plants amounted to five hundred. 

These plants proved more vigorous and 
productive than those under ordinary culture, 
so that the number of ears amounted to 
twenty-one thousand one hundred and nine ; 
and they were remarkably fine, some contain- 
ing from sixty to seventy grains each. The 
wheat, when separated from the straw, weigh- 
ed forty-seven pounds and seven ounces, and 
measured within two quarts of a bushel, the 
estimated number of grains being five hundred 
and seventy-six thousand eight hundi^ed and 
forty ! 

What wonderful forces, what subtle, ex- 
pansive energy and growth, were silently 
sleeping in this small, dry, unpromising look- 
ing little seed. And how amazing the life 



112 THE DEATH OF THE BODY 

that came from this single death. Who could 
have believed, without the actual sight, that 
the small and almost invisible germ wrapped 
in that one grain, could have multiplied and 
enlarged itself, and have diffused its vitalizing 
power through all these roots and shoots and 
stalks. Into more than five hundred thous- 
and other grains ! How just the Saviour's 
words — ' ' Except a corn of wheat fall into 
the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if 
It die, it bringeth forth much frtiit.^^ 

And how curious and admirable the consti- 
tution of this internal germ, the soul or spirit 
of the seed, that it should thus, under a 
change of circumstances seemingly so unfavor- 
able as being buried in the earth, be able to 
incorporate Into Itself the impalpable, ethereal 
essence of light and air and moisture ; that it 
should be able to assimilate them to Its t)wn 
nature, and so, according to the laws of Its 
being, re-create itself, enlarge and diffuse its 
life almost indefinitely ! 

These are the facts on which the metaphor 



THE LIFE or THE SriRIT. Ill 

of the apostle is founded ; and the great truth 
taught by it is this : As certainly as the germ 
of the wheat is quickened into life, and larger 
life, by the death of the outer envelope or 
body, so certainly the soul is lifted into life, 
larger and more glorious life, by the dissolu- 
tion of the mortal tabernacle in which it dwells 
while on earth. And the death of the body 
is as necessary to this renewal of the spirit, 
as the decomposition of the external integu- 
ment or shell of the wheat-grain, is to the 
quickening of the germ. 

And if this beautiful truth were received 
into the faith of the Christian, into the heart 
and life, the difference it would make in our 
living and dying, could not be expressed in 
words. It would clothe death with a new 
meaning, it would illuminate the realm of 
shadow as with the glory of the Lord, and 
transfigure all our thoughts and hopes of the 
future life. 

This true, and Death gives a thousand-fold 
more than he takes away. Every earthly 



114 THE DEATH OF THE BODY 

blessing left behind In going, Is compensated 
for by a wealth of gifts showered upon the 
spirit on Its arrival In the heavenly land. 
And though there may be pain and regret In 
parting with those who have loved us here, 
yet we are doubly comforted by thought of the 
glorious company of angels to which we go, 
and by the blessed knowledge that those we 
leave will by and by come to join us In the 
forward march from glory to glory ! 

It Is something to be thankful for to have 
life on this earth, life with all Its opportunities 
and gifts, with all Its growths, and revelations 
of knowledge, and births and buildings up of 
character ; but O how much more must It be 
in the great hereafter, when the unveiled 
splendors of the Lord's creation and the glo- 
ries of his presence shall dawn upon the soul 
eager to try Its newly-gotten liberty. Here 
the spirit Is restrained and cramped and hin- 
dered by the encumbering flesh. Its Infirmities 
and wants and lusts ; there It will be free, re- 
leased from all Its fetters, delivered from Its 



THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 115 

long bondage to the earthly nature, from all 
conflict with weakness and temptation — free 
to grow, and unfold all its povvers into new 
and diviner life ; free to rise higher and higher 
in the scale of excellence ; free to go upward 
from strength to strength, from beauty to 
beauty, from beatitude to beatitude, without 
limit and without hindrance. 

No man can measure the life of the soul 
in the coming eternity, nor set a limit to 
its growth and expansion. No man can 
prophesy of the celestial glories which will 
dawn upon it from age to age along the track 
of that great future. But the spirit comes to 
all this only by the pathway that leads through 
the dark valley, and ''over the river." Death 
alone strikes off its fetters, and opens* the 
doors of its prison house, and brings it the 
freedom of new birth and larger growth. 
' ' It cannot be quickened except it die — but 
if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." The 
old body perishes in order to give place to the 
new body • — ' ' there is a natural body and 



116 THE DEATH OF THE BODY 

there Is a spiritual body ; howbeit that is not 
first which is spiritual, but that which is nat- 
ural, and afterward that which is spiritual." 

The first stage of the soul's existence is in 
the natural body, clothed upon with flesh ; 
the second is in the spiritual body, clothed 
upon with the heavenly. The first is the 
infant state, the babyhood of our spiritual 
existence — is it desirable that it should never 
come to an end ? especiuUy when we remem- 
ber what that little grain of wheat grew up to 
as soon as the fitting conditions were present? 
The babe may be very interesting and win- 
ning, but who would wish always to remain a 
babe? Why then wish the soul to continue 
always in its infancy, confined in this natural 
body, hungering, thirsting, weary, cramped 
in growth and activity? Is it not better 
that the natural body should give place to 
the spiritual body, that the outer invest- 
ment of clay should die ; that the inward 
germ of the spirit, like that of the wheat 
grain, may spring up into more abundant 



THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 117 

fruitfulness, under the genial influences of the 
heavenly latitudes ? 

The Death of the Body is really the Life of 
the Soul. It is the Spirit's second birth; and, 
through the Resurrection, its growth from in- 
fancy to manhood ; the unfolding and ampli- 
fication of all its latent powers, of all the 
hidden forces of its nature. The death of the 
natural body has released these from their 
fleshly imprisonment. And as the grain of 
corn, in contact with the fresh soil, swells, 
and bursts, and shoots up through the crumb- 
ling mould, first the blade, then the ear, 
after that the full corn in the ear ; so the 
spirit, quickened by the warm and sunny 
breath of the celestial atmosphere, developes 
into new and vigorous growth, ripens into a 
wealth of fruitage, which it never could have 
attained to on earth. 

Why, then, should we cling with such te- 
nacity to the mortal body, the earthly life, the 
infant condition of the spirit ? Why should 
we stand shivering at the thought of death, 



118 THE DEATH OF THE BODY 

when, If Christians, we believe It opens out 
Into this richer, grander life of freedom and 
Immortality? this heavenly growth without 
Impediment, or check, or limit? 

When, therefore, the hour comes In which 
we must part from those who are dear to us, 
and pass on over the river which divides this 
from the Land of Promise : we may sorrow 
for the separation — It Is human, It Is natural, 
to weep In that hour — but let us be com- 
forted In our grief for the death of the body, 
by our faith In the larger, nobler, the Infi- 
nitely more glorious and blessed life of the 
spirit In the great Hereafter ! 

Our life is onward, and our very dust 

Is longing for its change, that it may take 

New combinations ; that the seed may break 

From its dark thraldom, where it lies in trust 

Of its great resurrection. 

And germs of beautiful vast thought, concealed 

Lie deep within the soul, which evermore 

Onward and iipward strive. The last in place 

Enfolds the higher yet to be revealed , 

And each the sepulchre of that which went before. 



V. 

^r^paratbix fax it. 



IB 



Faith is the rainbow's form, 

Hung on the brow of heaven, 
The glory of the passing storm, 
The pledge of mercy given. 
It is the bright triumphal arch, 
Through which the saints to glory march. 

^AVING thus far spoken of some of 
the peculiarly pleasing and suggestive 
figures under which the Scriptures rep- 
resent Death, and its relations to the body and 
the spirit : it seems fitting, though allusion 
has been made to it in counselling the sick, 
that something more should be said of the 
spiritual preparation needful for this great 
event ; of that faith, and religious experience, 




120 THE PASSAGE OF THE RIVER, 

and Christian culture, which can alone render 
the passage of the river easy to us. 

In. order to realize in our own souls the 
divine power of the truths conveyed by these 
metaphors, and possess the courage and peace 
which they are designed to inspire in the hour 
of death, we must make a personal appli- 
cation of them, we must appropriate them 
as our own by faith, and a healthy religious 
experience. 

It is not morality alone, not a good and 
just life merely, which makes the passage 
over the river easy, which takes the sting from 
death ; but faith ^ faith in the facts symbolized 
by these scriptural metaphors, faith in God, 
faith in Christ as the Saviour who came to 
' ' deliver them who through fear of death were 
all their lifetime subject to bondage." In the 
hour of our departure there is no substitute 
for faith, there is nothing which can give us 
comfort and support but religion. In that 
hour it is not genius, nor talent, nor science, 
nor philosophy, but the Gospel only that is 



AND THE PREPARATION FOR IT. 121 

of any avail — the living words of Jesus who 
died and rose again, leading captivity captive, 
and giving unto men, as he ascended on high, 
the gifts of hope and faith and victory over 
Death. 

As already remarked, we must make some 
effort in this direction. By a diligent and 
prayerful study of the Divine Word, we 
should seek to build our faith on a sure foun- 
dation ; knowing what we believe, and why we 
believe, and therefore confident that we stand 
upon the Rock of ages. Thus diligent and 
earnest we shall, with the blessing of the Holy 
Spirit, attain to that knowledge of God and 
the Saviour which is life eternal in the soul 
of the believer. We shall realize that we are 
always in the hands of a kind Father, whether 
living or dying, in time or eternity. And 
satisfied of this, whenever our time shall come 
we shall be ready with the aged and pious 
Simeon to say, ''Now Lord, lettest thou thy 
servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have 
seen thy salvation." 



122 THE PASSAGE OF THE RIVER, 

Blessed are they who have made this prep- 
aration of personal experimental religion ; who 
have made God their refuge ; for he is a very 
present help in time of trouble. Blessed are 
they who have sought, or are ready to seek, 
Christ as the Comforter, who is always ready 
to receive and bless those who seek him, even 
those coming at the eleventh hour. Sweet are 
the words of his invitation : ' ' Come unto me 
all ye w^ho labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, 
and learn of me ; for my yoke is easy, and 
my burden is light, and ye shall find rest unto 
your souls." 

Blessed are they, thrice blessed, who, op- 
pressed with sickness and suffering, and nigh 
unto the banks of the river of death, see 
Jesus as ''the Way, the Life, and the 
Truth!" who rest in, and rejoice in, that 
divine faith which sees God as the wise and 
merciful Kuler, the kind and tender Parent ; 
which looks on life as a school for the trial 
and development of our moral and spiritual 



AND THE PllEPAKATION FOR IT. 123 

powers ; which looks beyond the present into 
the future, and sees holiness and felicity and 
heaven as the final portion of the soul. This 
faith, accepted by the intellect and welcomed 
by the affections, gives to the departing soul 
a courage, a serenity, an absolute joy, the 
greatness of which to be understood must be 
experienced. 

It has about it an actuality which only the 
dying one can know. It so takes hold on the 
realities of the spirit-world, its vision becomes 
so clear that the white-robed angels seem to 
sweep through the heavenly courts in visible 
procession ; and the ear drinks in the sweet 
strains that float from the harps of the blessed, 
or breathe from the lips of adoring seraphim. 

One example out of many will serve to 
illustrate the power and blessedness of this 
faith, and the wonderful manner in which it 
imparts strength to the spiritual vision, and 
becomes the evidence, or demonstration to the 
soul, of the actual existence of things not 
seen by the mortal eye. I refer to the death- 



124 THE PASSAGE OF THE RIVER, 

scene of one who died as only the Christian 
can die. 

She had embraced the gospel In the fulness 
of Its salvation and Its blessing, embraced It 
in her heart as well as mind. She lived by 
it, and In obedience to Its precepts, and In the 
power of Its faith. She "honored It with a 
devotion — she loved it with an affection, 
which grew more and more ardent and absorb- 
ing up to the hour of her departure from earth 
to heaven. * The fruit of this was a life of the 
highest happiness, and a death triumphant as 
the farewell of the saints of old. 

Her sickness was short ; and yet when 
assured that It must prove fatal, she exhibited 
perfect resignation to the will of God, and 
expressed a desire ' ' to depart and be with 
Christ." Like Stephen of old, " full of faith 
and of the Holy Ghost," she looked beyond 
the waters, and " s^w the heavens opened." 
Friends who could not sympathize In the 
fulness of her faith, but who loved her as a 
sister, stood near, anxiously watching to see 



AND THE PREPARATION FOR IT. 125 

her cross to the other side. Pier husband, 
himself sceptical, laid his hand upon her fore- 
head, and deeply impressed with the solemni- 
ties of that trying moment, addressed her, 
saying, ''Dearest, do you believe that we 
shall meet again ? — meet in heaven ? " The 
spirit of faith, struggling for manifestation 
with an intensity which words could not utter, 
revealed itself in her countenance. ''And 
all " that stood by, " looking steadfastly upon 
her, saw her face as it had been the face of an 
angel." ' ' Believe ! " said she, as she ' ' looked 
up steadfastly unto heaven," " believe ! I know 
we shall meet again. I see it now! " 

And in this there was no excitement, no 
unnatural exaltation or rapture of the spirit. 
The summer evening is not calmer than was 
this dying saint ; no hero of the highest sort 
was ever more perfectly self-possessed. It is 
easy to see, therefore, how such a faith real- 
izes to itself the promises of God, and the 
revelations of the gospel. It seems to reach 
out and actually to lay hold on the coming 



12(3 THE PASSAGE OF THE RIVER, 

joy, and to see, as with anointed eyes, the 
glorious mansions of the blessed, the house 
not made with hands, eternal In the heavens. 

This humble and unknown woman saw 
what the wisest men on earth cannot see with- 
out faith. She was braver than the bravest, 
and richer than the richest, can ever be, with- 
out the wealth and the blessing of this faith, 
which smiles In the face of death ; and while 
It puts one hand Into his, puts the other Into 
God's, and passes joyfully ''over the river." 

Plato, with his profound philosophy, and 
soaring speculations, and marvellous knowl- 
edge, cannot die as this Christian woman dies. 
She is profounder than he, and has a heav- 
enly wisdom greater than anything written in 
the Divine Dialogues. But the death-scene 
of Socrates? It does not compare with this. 
He hoped and submitted — she believed and tri- 
umphed! He went forth Into the dark, doubt- 
ful whither he went ; she went forth confident, 
rejoicing, with the morning light of the resur- 
rection breaking in upon her soul ! 



AND THE PREPARATION FOR IT. 127 

Look at La Place with his far-reaching 
science, disentangling the seemingly confused 
web of the spheres, thinking almost that he 
had his finger on the pulse of the universe ; 
excluding God, by his material philosophy, 
from his own creation ; wonderful as he is, 
vast as is the reach of his genius, he cannot 
die as this woman dies. All he knows he 
would give gladly, in the hour of death, for 
that simple, sublime, victorious faith, which 
sweeps majestic far above the stars, whose 
courses he so long and so painfully studied. 

Can anything more be needed, then, than 
these sharp contrasts to show the infinite 
superiority of simple Christian faith over 
philosophy and science? over mere intellect, 
without the sanctification of faith and love ? 

Was not this humble disciple of Jesus, her 
heart full of the overflowing blessedness of the 
gospel, her eye kindling with the radiance of 
heaven, her soul lifting up its everlasting song 
of victory over death ; just touching the grave 
as she went by, and then on white waving 



128 THE PASSAGE OF THE RIVER. 

wing passing swiftly into the heavens to take 
her place among the angels — was she not 
greater than all these of whom we have 
spoken? And is there a more gloriaus tri- 
umph in all the earth than this ? 

If not, then, let us with all diligence strive 
for this living earnest faith, which looks 
through all the mists that float above the 
river of death, and, even while we are cros- 
sing, hears from afar the hallelujahs of the 
'^seraphs that adore and burn." 

Yes, often in the hours of holy thought, 

To the thirsting soul is given 
That power to pierce through the mist of sense, 

To the beauteous scenes of heaven. 
Then very near seem its pearly gates, 

And sweetly its harpings fall ; 
Till the soul is restless to soar away. 

And longs for the angel's call. 

* 

I know when the silver cord is loosed, 

When the veil is rent away, 
Not long and dark will the passage be 

To the realms of endless day. 
The eye that shuts in the dying hour 

Will open the next in bliss ; 
The welcome will sound in the heavenly world. 

Ere the farewell is hushed in this. 



VI. 

^lit Wiaxta hpnb t^t '§tbtx, ox tl^t 
(Blox^ of % C^kstml. 



Since o'er thy footstool here below 

Such radiant gems are strown , 
what magnificence must glow, 

Great God, around thy throne ! 
So brilliant here these drops of light — 
There the full ocean rolls — how bright ! 

^HE class of figures descriptive of death 
and the future life, which we have thus 
far brought to view, do not express all 
the phases of human desire and expectation. 
There is another element which often enters 
very largely into the thought of some ; and to 
these activity, and not rest, activity, perpetual 
growth and progress to something higher and 
better, constitute the most attractive and de- 
9 



130 THE WORLD BEYOND THE RIVER, 

lightful pictures of the spirit's life hereafter. 
And there are times, perhaps, when we are 
all open to the influence of this thought, and 
feel a longing to enter upon the career of 
knowledge and glory to which the vast and 
various creation of God invites us, and from 
which we are held back by these fetters of 
flesh and clay. 

And, when we attempt to survey the meas- 
ureless fields of the material universe, when 
we think of what this earth contains, and con- 
sider how small it is compared even with some 
of the other planets of our solar system ; and 
when, going out of this system, we think of 
the suns and constellations which crowd the 
abysses of space, and reflect the splendors 
of divine wisdom and power — we cannot fail 
to realize, in some degree, the mighty influ- 
ences operating on the soul to incite it to 
activity, and the multitudinous and glorious 
objects calling it on from wonder to wonder, 
from knowledge to knowledge. 

And In view of this grand display of God's 



OR THE GLORY OF THE CELESTIAL.. 131 

creative power, it is impossible to feel that the 
future life is to introduce us to no nearer 
acquaintance with these far-off splendors. It 
is difficult to believe that when, liberated from 
the body, we are, for the first time, in a con- 
dition to visit and explore the distant constel- 
lations ; and when the desire to behold and 
study the marvels and treasures of knowledge 
they contain grows upon us, and fills the 
soul with longings — that then we shall be 
compelled to forego this divine joy, to 
settle down into eternal quiet and inactivity 
in some corner of the universe, and call it 
heaven ! 

No, there is something better for us than 
this in the realization of the Christian idea of 
immortality. The starry skies which enfold 
us on all sides, are illuminated scrolls written 
all over by the hand of God w^ith a kind 
of prophecy of the ever increasing acquisi- 
tions, the ever new discoveries, the intellec- 
tual growth and spiritual delight, which wait 
to welcome us when, escaped from these taber- 



132 THE WORLD BEYOND THE PJVER, 

nacles of clay, we soar upward in the joyful 
freedom of the spirit. 

And what thoughts crowd upon us when, 
from this stand-point we seek to map out to 
ourselves the vast regions of the soul's future 
life and enterprise ; and to catalogue some of 
the numberless particulars which will engage 
its attention, and reward its inquiries. I look 
around upon this earth which makes the 
primary school of our life, where we learn 
our first lessons in the wonders of creation, 
and get our first experiences of intelligent 
beings — or, in a word, where we first come 
in contact with the mysteries of matter and 
of mind — 

I look abroad upon the earth, and try to 
form some idea of it, to shape out some dis- 
tinct impression of what it is, and what it 
holds. I see it is not one thing only, but 
many things. It is Europe, and Asia, and 
Africa, and America; France and England 
and Russia and the United States, and the 
islands of the sea ; it is the Atlantic and the 



OR THE GLORY OF THE CELESTIAL. 133 

Pacific, and lakes and rivers, and little brooks ; 
it is hill and valley, the Andes and the prai- 
ries, and sand deserts, and dense forests, 
orchards and gardens and fields ; it is mines 
of gold and silver, iron and lead and coal, and 
wells of oil ; it is cities, and villages, and 
farm-houses everywhere ; it is wild beasts and 
tame, and birds, and fishes, of every sort; it 
is a thousand millions of men and women and 
children, black and red and white, in their 
huts and palaces and homes ; it is art and 
science, poetry, and music, and painting, and 
sculpture, philosophy and religion ; it is being 
born, and living, and rejoicing, and sorrow- 
ing, and dying. This earth means all these 
things, and many thousands more. ' And what 
room for exploration and knowledge, what 
materials for study, what means for acquisi- 
tion and growth. What endless variety of 
scene and subject for the active mind ; and 
what infinite reward and blessing await the 
diligent and successful discoverer ! 

And when I have glanced thus over the 



134 

earth, which is all that is allotted us for this 
present life in the body — when I think, small 
as it is, how vast and innumerable its sources 
of instruction and enjoyment, how various and 
variable its objects of interest and delight — 
then I look up into the infinite depths, and 
gaze in silent wonder at the troops of worlds 
as they go by in glittering columns. I take 
up the telescope, and lo ! whole hosts, unseen 
before, come marching into sight from the 
far-off spaces beyond the reach of the naked 
eye ; great suns, as it were captains, with 
companies of stars following them, and shin- 
ing constellations sweeping into the azure 
fields, till all the skies, as far as eye or instru- 
ment can reach, are filled with the gorgeous 
array ! 

Then I say to myself. What are these 
thronging hosts ? For what are they ? Why 
are they placed within reach of our vision, 
with all their bewildering beauty, if they are 
not for us ? if we are never to visit them ? 
But we never can visit them in this earthly 



OR THE GLORY OF THE CELESTIAL. 135 

body. Tlien I am sure, for that very reason^ 
that ive shall visit them out of the body ! This 
is to be the work and the joy of the soul. 
Here is the sphere of its activity, the school of 
its future education, the temple of its wor- 
ship ; its heaven, in part, assuredly, in the ^ 
coming eternity ! 

And what a sphere, what a broad and glo- 
rious theatre for action — these constellations 
and suns and moons, planets and earths, com- 
pared with some of which our little world is 
only as a boy's football or marble. And then 
all these worlds that we can see to the utmost 
boundaries of telescopic vision, are only the 
lamps lighting the entrance to the great tem- 
ple of the Lord God, which still lies beyond, 
out of sight, infinite in extent, incomparable 
in its splendors. 

And what was our brief definition of this 
earth, so various with its continents and seas, 
its exhibitions of nature and art, its wonders 
of life and intelligence ! Consider then the 
treasures of knowledge and joy in these mil- 



136 THE WORLD BEYOND THE RIVER. 

lions of worlds which will call to us, and 
beckon us on, through all eternity ! What 
ever shifting exhibitions of natural scenery — 
what new fields for science, for study and con- 
templation — what new forms of being, and 
new orders of intelligences, and ever-rising 
ranks of spiritual life ! O what a glorious 
future this is to go to ! What an exultant 
life for the soul, when Death strikes off the 
fetters of the flesh, and sets it free ; when 
dust returns to dust whence it came, and the 
spirit returns to God who gave it ! What if 
the path to this do lead down for a little into 
the dark, cannot we tread it firmly and fear- 
lessly, when we know that it leads up finally 
into the eternal splendors ? 

The soul of man was made to walk the skies ; 
Delightful outlet of her prison here ! 
And, disencumhered from her chains, the ties 
Of toys terrestrial, there she roves at large ; 
In full proportion lets loose all her powers ; 
And wonderful herself, through wonder strays ; 
Grows conscious of her birth celestial ; breathes 
More life, more vigor, in her native air, 
And feels herself at home among the stars ! 



YII. 

^mpkgm^nls of % Jfwte^ ^ifjp. 



Father ! all sufficient ! over all ! 
Enrich me with the knowledge of thy works — 
Lift me to heaven ; thy rolling wonders there, 
World beyond world, in infinite extent. 
Profusely scattered o'er the blue immense, 
Show me ; their motions, periods and their laws. 

^HE Scriptures do not enter into details 
in regard to the future life ; but deal 
mostly in the broad declaration that 
we shall be as angels in the resurrection 
world, immortal, holy and happy. Still, there 
are some allusions and indirect references to 
the employments of the heavenly state, and 
some inferences legitimately deducible from 
existing facts and arrangements in the provi- 



138 EMPLOYMENTS OF 

dence of God, confirmatory of the preceding 
argument ; and which seem to unfold to us 
the divine plan of blessedness in the future 
life, or at least to indicate something of its va- 
rious activity. Occasionally we have glimpses 
of light which open upon a diversified disposi- 
tion of aflTairs in the spirit world, and an end- 
less variety of blissful employments, adapted 
to the different capacities, or degrees of de- 
velopeinent of human souls. 

And this very difference in capacity or spir- 
itual power, as well as in the degree of ad- 
vancement, seems to require a corresponding 
variety of action, and diversity in the kinds of 
happiness. Unless all remain at the same 
point of spiritual growth at which they enter 
on the future life ; unless all souls are, as it 
were, run in the same mould, and endowed 
with exactly the same measure of strength, the 
same emotions, and desires, and thoughts — 
there must be a great variety both in the 
kinds of happiness and in the degrees. And 
why not ? Is heaven less fertile in resources 



THE FUTURE LIFE. 139 

for the employ meut and enjoyment of its in- 
habitants, than earth? 

How various the sources of enjoyment and 
of pleasurable activity in the present. How 
manifold and dissimilar the methods adopted 
in securing happiness. And is it not proba- 
ble — nay, certain that the future life will 
furnish as much room for action and develope- 
ment of character ; furnish as various employ- 
ment for the intellect, as numerous sources of 
gratification, as the present life? It is not 
easy, as before remarked, for the thoughtful 
Christian to believe that our only employ- 
ment, the only source of happiness for the 
soul hereafter, will be in singing songs of 
praise, or in formal ascriptions of glory and 
honor to God and the Lamb. It is not ac- 
cordant with the arrangements of divine prov- 
idence and government so far as we have any 
knowledge of them. It is not in harmony 
with the intellectual nature of man, which re- 
quires, as indispensable to its highest enjoy- 
ment, activity, continued movement and ad- 



140 EMPLOYMENTS OF 

vancement, ceaseless additions to its materials 
for thought and study, and a constant enlarge- 
ment of its sphere of operations. 

The soul will be glad and grateful for the 
past ; but it will require that the present and 
the future shall not compel it to idleness, to 
the mere passive enjoyment of dreaming of 
the past. It will ask for the new blessedness 
of ever fresh exhibitions of the power and 
wisdom and beneficence of the Infinite ; for 
continued discoveries, and the joy of ever- 
increasing knowledge and spiritual power. 
And if this be not provided for in some way, 
it would seem as if the mere change of worlds 
cannot make heaven for it. There must be 
an adaptation of condition and circumstances 
to the nature of the soul, to the elements of 
its life, to realize the true idea of heaven. 

It were well to form our opinions on this 
point from those passages which repeat to us 
the songs and ascriptions of praise to God, 
from angels and cherubim, and those exalted 
spirits that bow before the throne, saying, 



THE FUTURE LIFE. 141 

''Holy, holy Lord God Almighty — Glory be 
to thee in the highest, and honor and power ; 
for thou hast made all things — great and 
marvellous are thy works ; just and true are 
thy ways. The heavens shall declare thy 
wonders ; all thy works shall praise thee, and 
thy saints shall bless thee ! " These hymns of 
praise show their source in a knowledge of the 
glorious works of God, in admiration of the 
stupendous exhibitions of divine power, wis- 
dom and goodness in the illimitable fields of 
creation. 

We may imagine, and not without great 
probability, that these blessed, angelic beings, 
after extended excursions to some distant 
province or portion of the boundless empire 
of the Almighty — after having surveyed some 
remote system of worlds, and made themselves 
familiar with their various aspects ; the details 
of their physical history ; the changes of sur- 
face ; the stages of geological developement ; 
the distribution of animal and vegetable life ; 
the character, developement, organism, moral 



142 employjMents of 

relations and mental endowments of the intel- 
ligent inhabitants of each — after beholding 
these multiplied exhibitions of the divine en- 
ergy, skill and benevolence, — we may well 
imagine them returning from this delightful 
and instructive excursion, and gathering about 
the throne of the Ancient of Days, with these 
ascriptions of glory and honor, as the utter- 
ance of joy, of adoration and gratitude for 
what they have seen and learned on this, to 
them, new theatre of the divine operations. 

And in view of some such event as this, 
how much more force and meaning are given 
to the Eevelator's language, when he says that, 
• overwhelmed, as it were, with the sense of 
God's infinite power and wisdom, and with 
the extent and splendor of his creation, they 
fell down and ' ' worshipped Him that liveth 
forever and ever ; and cast their crowns before 
the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord ! 
to receive glory and honor and power : for 
thou hast created all things, and for thy pleas- 
ure they are and were created." 



THE FUTURE LIFE. 143 

And then consider for a moment the extent 
of the field open to the glorified spirit. No 
language is adequate to the grandeur of the 
theme. The number of systems within reach 
of our telescopes is reckoned at nearly eighty 
millions. Sir William Herschell informs us 
that, in surveying a portion only of the milky 
way, one of the nebulae visible from our 
planet, there passed, in the space of seven 
minutes, fifty thousand stars across the field 
of his telescope ! Suppose each one of these 
suns to have in revolution about it some thirty 
planetary bodies, primary and secondary, and 
we have in one portion of the universe within 
range of our instruments a congregation of, 
2,400,000,000 of worlds ! And then, let us 
add to this the fact that the nearest of these 
suns is, at least, twenty billions of miles dis- 
tant from us — and if we have no very definite 
conception of these vast numbers and spaces, 
as we probably have not ; we are certainly 
very powerfully impressed with the immensity 
of the creation, and of the field of investiga- 



144 EMPLOYMENTS OF 

tion opened to the soul hereafter. And con- 
sider that all this is but the threshold of the 
temple of nature — that all these suns and 
stars visible to us, are, as one has singularly 
said, only the ''street-lamps of the city of 
God." 

And then, when we have glanced at the 
extent of this field of action and enjoyment, 
imagine, if possible, the infinite variety it 
affords for inquiry and intellectual and moral 
entertainment. How many questions crowd 
upon the mind for consideration. ''Are all 
these vast globes inhabited? If so, what is 
their history in the past and the present ? Are 
the inhabitants pure moral intelligences, or 
are they exposed to the inroads of physical 
and moral evil? What are the gradations of 
rank and intellect among them ? What sci- 
ences do they cultivate? What knowledge 
have they of other portions of the divine em- 
pire? What discoveries have they m^de of 
the perfections of the Deity, of the plan of his 
government, and the extent of his dominions?'* 



THE FUTURE LIFE. 145 

What corporeal veliicles do they employ in 
connection with the material world? What 
kind of organization are they endowed with ? 
In what organs of sense or faculties of mind 
do they differ from man? What is their 
social condition? What means of improve- 
ment and progress have they? What is the 
physical character of the planet they inhabit? 
What diversity of external scenery greets their 
sight? What celestial glories are hung out 
for their contemplation in the canopy of heav- 
en ? What visible displays of the power and 
wisdom of God in his works are presented to 
them? What exhibitions of his goodness in 
nature or by revelation have they been favored 
with ? These and a thousand other inquiries 
rise up before the mind in this world ; but we 
have no answer. What variety of employ- 
ment and happiness, then, will the soul find 
hereafter in searching into these things, and 
increasing its knowledge of the wondrous 
works and ways of the Infinite One ; and, 

through this, lifting itself into ever-growing 
10 



146 EMPLOYMENTS OF 

adoration and love. And when we remember 
that this is only one department of inquiry, 
and yet so abundant in its contributions to the 
active enjoyments of heavenly spirits ; how 
vast and innumerable must be the sources 
which God has supplied for the improvement, 
instruction and blessedness of the soul in the 
future life ! 

It is certainly strange that, to so great an 
extent, Christians should have regarded the 
almost sole employment of the redeemed to 
be, the celebration in songs and hallelujahs of 
the grace of God in the redemption through 
Christ — and this throughout the ceaseless 
ages of eternity ; while the boundless and infi- 
nitely glorious universe of God, with its num- 
berless suns and systems, with its magnificent 
displays of the divine perfections, lies all 
around them unvisited, unknown and uncared 
for ; while poetry, with which creation is rife, 
philosophy, science, history, and the activity 
and the joy of learning and instructing, are 
all neglected and forgotten ! 



THE FUTURE LIFE. 147 

Doubtless the first will constitute an im- 
portant part of the beatitudes of the heav- 
enly life ; but surely the last will contribute 
largely to the same result. Certainly every 
well instructed Christian will confess that the 
views we have presented seem much more 
accordant with the character of God, the na- 
ture of the human soul, and what we may 
reasonably suppose to be the object of its 
future endless life — viz : advancement forever 
in spii"itual blessedness, which is itself the 
product of growth forever in the knowledge of 
the Divine Being, his government, perfec- 
tions and infinite beneficence, whether reveal- 
ed in Christ or in his works. 

And with the various capacities, and the 
different stages of developement of spiritual 
beings, what room for mutual aid, instruction 
and enjoyment. Continually arriving from 
the innumerable worlds which people the vast 
regions of the universe ; will not these new 
comers require the guidance and teaching of 
those that have been longer inhabitants of the 



148 EMPLOYMENTS OF 

celestial sphere, and made farther progress in 
heavenly culture and education ? and will not 
both, teacher and taught, find a common joy 
in the employment? Who that ever looked 
upon an affectionate parent instructing his 
child, pointing out the beauties of a flower or 
a plant, or the glories of the starry host, or 
recounting some history, or entertaining le- 
gend — who, beholding this, and witnessing 
the calm joy and satisfaction beaming from 
the face of the parent, and the intense interest 
and delight that danced in the eye, and lighted 
up the glowing countenance of the young 
learner, did not feel that both alike were 
blessed ? did not feel that of all scenes our life 
exhibits, this is among the most lovely; the 
most perfect picture of mutual tenderness and 
mutual joy? 

And why should the heavenly life be robbed 
of it ? Why may not the more advanced and 
exalted spirits so take the direction and in- 
struction of the younger ; and lead them forth 
from world to world, and initiate them into 



THE FUTURE LIFE. 149 

the mysteries, and unfold to them the splen- 
dors of the divine workmanship? Why not 
take them In charge as they enter the celestial 
sphere, and in familiar instructive converse 
walk with them through the sounding aisles, 
and along the lofty galleries of Nature's great 
cathedral ; till they shall come at last, filled 
with wonder and joy, to the chancel, the sanc- 
tuary, the Holy of holies, — where God the 
Infinite manifests himself in glory ineffable : 
where cherubim and seraphim, in turn, con- 
tinually do cry. Holy, Holy Lord God Al- 
mighty — great and marvellous are thy works ! 
glorious in wisdom and power art Thou, doing 
wonders continually — Blessed be thy name, 
Thou King of kings, and Lord of lords ! 

sometimes, when adown the sky, 

The fiery sunset ling^s. 
Heaven's golden gates swing inward noiselessly, 

Unlocked by unseen fingers, — 

And while they stand a moment half ajar. 

Gleams from the inner glory, 
Stream brightly through the azure vault afar, 

And half reveal the story. 



VIII. 

t %iixndmnB of Mmhm, 



Nor bard, nor sage may comprehend 
The heaven of love to which we tend, 
Our home is not this mortal clime ; 
Our life hath not its bounds in time ; 
And death is but the cloud that lies 
Between our souls and Paradise ! 

, UT there are other elements of our na- 
ture beside the intellectual, which find 
their employment and joy in the world 
of light and glory. We have already alluded 
to this point, but it 'has so much comfort in 
it that we shall enlarge upon it, even at the 
risk of seeming to repeat some things already 
said. Not only the mind, but the heart also, 
the religious and social affections, will find 
attractions there. ^'In the Father's house 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF HEAVEN. 151 

there are many mansions," and in each one of 
them we shall find some new delight, some 
dear remembered face, some precious jewel 
treasured on earth, some beautiful and beloved 
spirit who ministered to our comfort and hap- 
piness while we were pilgrims in this lower 
world, afar from home. Surely we shall not 
be alone there — a father or mother will meet 
us ; a husband or wife or beloved child, a 
brother or sister, or some dear friend will 
welcome us. 

Yes, one of the most grateful and pleasing 
thoughts of the future life is that which renews 
the loving and tender associations of this. 
Heaven will be to the future, what home is 
to the present life ; the sacred place where the 
affections may utter themselves without re- 
straint, where the heart may gather up its 
treasures, rejoicing in its everlasting heritage 
of love and blessedness. There our cherished 
and idolized ones will gather around us, and 
fold their arms about us, and engage in sweet 
and pleasant converse. They who walked 



152 THE ATTRACTIONS OF HEAVEN. 

with us in the cheerful sunlight, and in the 
solemn shadows, of our earthly life. They 
who bore with us the heat and burthen of the 
day. They who loved us as Ave yearned to be 
loved, and on whom the gushing tenderness 
of the heart was poured out like summer rain 
upon the fields. They whose sweet faces were 
like smiles from heaven on our earthly sor- 
row, and whose kind words fell on the worn 
heart like dew on withering plants, — 

" They the young and strong, who cherished 

Noble longings for the strife, 
By the roadside fell and perished, 

Weary with the march of life — 
They, the holy ones and weakly 

Who the cross of suffering bOre, 
Folded their pale hands so meekly. 

Spake with us on earth no more." 

All these shall come to us again — and O how 
blessed the meeting — "sl family in heav- 
en, no wanderer lost." We shall live again — 
we shall be together again. Love is immortal 
as the soul. And the poorest and most hope- 
less of earth's children, the most darkened and 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF HEAVEN. 153 

wayward and forsaken, is still loved of some 
one in the great crowd of life — and God loves 
us all ! 

Yes, we shall meet again, all of us, and 
rejoice together in the glorious light of the 
Sun of Righteousness. If it were not so, the 
gift of a future life would be of little worth. 
Take from us those we love, and you take 
away all that makes Heaven desirable. 

For " how dark, how drear, how lone 
Would seem the brightest world of bliss, 

If wandering through each radiant sphere, 
We failed to meet the loved of this." 

Tell me that I am never again to behold 
the precious ones who have cared for me and 
watched over me here, whose spirits were 
toned in chord with mine, whose gentle minis- 
tries of affection have given life all its beauty 
and blessedness — tell me I shall never see 
nor be with these again, and I cannot go in 
peace, I will not say to the grave — but not 
even to a life, however glorious, where they 
are not. No ; and I say it not hastily, but 



154 THE ATTRACTIONS OF HEAVEN. 

with much thought — I could not desire a 
heaven, where I am not to find those dear 
beings who have woven themselves like golden 
threads into the very texture of my soul, and 
have become to me as the pulse of my heart. 

Thanks be to Grod the Father, and to our 
Lord Jesus Christ, I shall find them — every 
one of them in some of the many mansions of 
the Father's house ; and there together we 
shall lift up the hymn of redemption, and be- 
hold the glory of the Lord's creation, and 
worship in the beauty of holiness ; for there 
we shall be renewed in the spirit, and in a 
higher and holier sense we shall be the chil- 
dren of God, being children of the Eesur- 
rection ! 

There is, then, everything in heaven to 
make it attractive, everything to call our 
thoughts thitherward. There is light and truth 
without darkness or error ; there knowledge is 
increasing without hindrance, and happiness 
without limit ; there are the lost, and loved, 
and beautiful of earth : there is a reunion of 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF HEAVEN. 155 

all the broken links and sundered ties of 
affection; there is rest and peace, for ''God 
shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and 
there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, 
nor crying, neither shall there be any more 
pain, for the former things are passed away." 
In the words of one, to whom all this has 
now become a reality : ' ' Why should I fear 
to die? Let me rather welcome death as the 
beautiful gate that leads to such a blessed 
immortality. 

Immortal life ! my heavenly home ! How 
many attractions it has ! how many loved ob- 
jects I shall meet there ! how many dear and 
precious memories will be revived there ! 

I shall see and know my heavenly Father 
there as I have never seen or known him on 
this earth. How kind and gracious he has 
been to me ! how precious are all his prom- 
ises ! How sweet then is the thought, I shall 
see him unveiled in all his glory, and know 
him as my best and truest friend ! 

I shall see Jesus, my Saviour ; he who 



156 THE ATTRACTIONS OF HEAVEN. 

loved me and died for me. How many rea- 
sons are there for loving him more than my 
poor, sinful heart has ever done ! But I shall 
see him in my heavenly home, and know him 
as mine and the world's Saviour. 

I shall see and recognize all those dear 
ones of my heart, who have passed away into 
the spirit-world. Their presence, their kindly 
spirit and affection, their genial friendship and 
love, made this world very bright and beauti- 
ful, but now they have left it. Welcome, 
then, thrice welcome the kind hand that shall 
guide me to those I love. Dear ones will be 
left behind ; for them must still be the toil 
and struggle and disappointment ; for them 
the bitterness of parting; but for me, oh, how 
blessed will be that reunion ! " 

And there is yet another pleasing thought, 
not alluded to in this extract, which gives at- 
tractiveness to the heavenly life — we shall 
meet the great and wise and good of all times 
and nations, and mingle in their society, and 
rejoice in their fellowship. There we shall 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF HEAVEN. 157 

see and commune with Moses and Isaiah, 
with Paul and John ; with Confucius and Soc- 
rates, and Plato, and Origen ; with Fenelon, 
and Howard, and Channing ; with Bacon and 
Newton, and a host of others, who, by the 
splendor of their intellects, or by the saintly 
goodness of their lives, glorified the earth, 
and are now themselves glorified in heaven. 
What delight to speak with such as these, to 
listen to their instructive speech, to hear them 
recount their intellectual triumphs, their vis- 
ions of the glory of the Lord Creator as dis- 
played in his works, their deeds of Christian 
benefaction, their divinely beautiful spiritual 
experiences, their great deliverance from their 
earthly bondage, and their visits, since they 
were clothed upon with bodies celestial, to the 
clustered worlds and constellated wonders that 
flame along the far-off abysses of the uni- 
verse ! O what a joy awaits us in such soci- 
ety as this ; and how it draws the soul toward 
the heavenly land, where only it is possible to 
behold and speak with these glorified spirits • 



158 THE ATTRACTIONS OF HEAVEN. 

And though we do not love the elect and pre- 
cious of earth any less, yet It takes something 
from the bitterness of death, when we think of 
the great company of noble minds whom we 
go to join. And we are doubly comforted in 
the thought that, by and by, those whom we 
leave behind will come to us, and share with 
us in all the delights of this heavenly inter- 
course with the wise and the noble, the great 
and the good, of all ages and generations ! 

Oh yes, we shall meet in a world that is bright, 
Where God and the Lamb are the glory and light, 
Where sorrow is ended, and tears are all dried, 
And the love of the faithful no longer is tried. 

O ye who have tasted affliction's strong power, 
Remember who governs the desolate hour, 
And with faith's steady vision keep strong on your way, 
Assured that your strength shall be still as your day. 

Thus every dear spirit whose conflict is past, 

Hath labored and striven in faith to the last ; 

And if we are faithful, as they whom we love, 

*' Tho' we miss them below, we shall meet them above." 



IX. 

%itxwi:ixann of €mi^. 



yes, I love the earth — its cares and sorrows, 
Its bounding hopes, its feelings fresh and warm, 

Each cloud it wears, and every light it borrows. 
Loves, wishes, fears, the sunshine and the storm — 

1 love them all ; but closer still the loving 
Twine with my being's chords, and make my life. 

^ UT after all that may be said of the 
glories of the future, and of the attrac« 
tions of heaven, earth also has its at- 
tractions, which it is hard to go away from and 
leave — sweet pictures from nature, pleasant 
homes, delightful memories of the past, bright 
hopes of the future, extensive usefulness, a 
well earned reputation ; and, above all, dear 
friends and companions, fond and faithful pa- 
rents, a devoted husband, an affectionate wife, 



160 ATTRACTIONS OF EARTH. 

beloved children, who, by their constant kind- 
ness and watchful tenderness, have made all 
the years of our life beautiful and blessed. 
These are some of the attractions which make 
life on earth desirable, some of the strong ties 
which hold ,us to the present, and the sunder- 
ing of which give to death much of its bitter- 
ness. It is hard to die, and leave all these. 
It is hard to die, when there is so much to 
live for. If we could all go together, it would 
be less difficult ; it would be easy to die, and 
go home in one company to the Father's 
house. 

Certainly there is truth in all this ; and it 
would be equally wrong and useless to ignore 
it, or to pretend that it ought not to have any 
weight with a Christian. It is our common 
human nature which speaks in this ; it is the 
heart pleading for its treasures with a sacred 
constancy, with a voice of tenderness, which 
the most devout and submissive Christian can- 
not, and would not wish, to silence. In lov- 
ing the Saviour, we do not cease to love our 



ATTKACTIONS OF EARTH. IGl 

friends ; nor Is the highest trust in God incon- 
sistent with the fondest attachments of human 
affection. And the ever compassionate Father 
does not ask us, in remembering and confid- 
ing in Him, to forget, 9r cease to chng to, 
those who have lovingly nestled down in the 
secret places of our hearts. 

Still, it is only just and right that we should 
have a reasonable confidence in God, that we 
should believe in the wise beneficence of his 
dealings with us, even if they do disappoint 
our wishes ; and we, in our blindness, cannot 
see the good they are designed to work out 
for us. This assuredly the Father has a right 
to ask at our liands in return for the many 
thousand proofs of his goodness to us in the 
past ; as well as because of the numerous pos- 
itive declarations and precious promises of his 
holy word, that in all he does with us, for us, 
to us, he is steadily seeking our highest inter- 
ests and happiness. We see through a glass 
darkly now, and know only in part ; and we 
must not expect, therefore, to see as God 
11 



162 ATTRACTIONS OF EAKTH. 

sees, or perfectly to understand his thoughts 
or his ways, which are higher than ours as 
the heavens are higher than the earth. 

You, my friend, In the midst of your life 
and usefulness, held by so many strong cords 
of affection, feel that It Is very hard to die ; 
and you cannot see how your death can have 
any good In It for yourself, or for those dear 
ones who so fondly cling to you, and shelter 
themselves so trustingly under the protection 
of your love. I will not pretend that I clearly 
see It either ; but I know that there Is much 
good hidden in evil that I did not see once, 
which Is now distinctly visible to me ; and 
events, which, at the time, I deplored as the 
greatest sorrows of my life, have long ago 
shaped themselves Into the greatest blessings. 
And so I have learned to be slow and humble 
In my judgment of the ways of God ; and I 
try, however great the struggle it costs, to 
pray in my sorrows, as well as In my joys, 
living or dying: "Thy will, and not mine, 
be done." 



ATTRACTIONS OF EARTH. 163 

And haye not you, my dear friend, required 
from your children the same confidence and 
laving submission which you so reluctantly 
yield toward your Father in heaven? How 
often have the platfs, which your judgment 
and affection devised for the good of your 
boy, the pride of your heart, conflicted with 
his wishes and desires. He had his own views 
of the best method of securing happiness ; and 
perhaps believed that freedom from all re- 
straint, the society of his mates, the absence 
of all study and work, and a perpetual round 
of amusements, made up the sum of human 
enjoyment. On the other hand, you knew 
that education and knowledge, employment, 
usefulness and a manly tone of thought and 
character, were the surest and only path to 
happiness. 

And this is exactly the relation existing be- 
tween God the Father and you his child. To 
your boy play seems better than school, but it 
is not ; and when boyhood passes into man- 
hood he will see his mistake, and thank you 



164 ATTRACTIONS OF EAKTH. 

for denying his prayers and preferences. And 
yet it IS a real grief to him to give up his 
games and frolics ; but it is a blessed grief, 
for it brings him to knowledge and honor and 
true happiness. In reality his grief is joy in 
disguise. 

Is it not so with you, with us all, when our 
will does not agree with the will of God, 
when our plans do not harmonize with his? 
You wish to live, to stay in this world with 
those whose love and companionship are so 
dear to you — this is a greater good to you 
than to depart and be here no more. In a 
word, life is the only good, death is the only 
evil. But it is plain that God thinks differ- 
ently, or he would not now be leading you 
down to the banks of the river of death. And 
are you not safer in trusting to his knowl- 
edge than to your own? are you surer of 
abiding blessedness for yourself or your be- 
loved ones, when you follow the path of 
your own wishes, instead of the path of his 
wisdom ? 



ATTRACTIONS OF EARTH. 165 

In a word, to come directly to the real 
issue, if your Father in heaven should speak 
to you audibly, and tell you, that of his infi- 
nite knowledge he had determined it was bet- 
ter for you to die now, would you be willing, 
if it were left to you, to take the risk of 
living ? Would you dare the solemn respon- 
sibility of setting up your decision against his ? 
Now this is really the state of the case. God 
has spoken to you, not audibly, but by the 
fact of your present condition, and told you 
that it is better for you to go hence over the 
river, into the realms of immortal life ! Had 
you not then better leave it with Him, your 
Father in heaven, whose wisdom never errs, 
and whose love will never fail you ? and will 
you not try, with a sweet and childlike trust, 
to say, even if the tears come with it : ''Thy 
will, O God, and not mine, be done." Be 
sure that, with effort and prayer, strength will 
come, and resignation, and by and by, peace 
passing knowledge and expression. And it 
will be fulfilled unto you at last, the promise 



166 ATTRACTIONS OF EABTH. 

of Jesus to his disciples : ' ' I will pray the 
Father, and he shall send the Comforter in 
my name, that he may abide with you forever, 
even the Spirit of Truth." 

^^ At last" — for this perfect calm and res- 
ignation will not come at once, and, as re- 
marked, not without effort. No one, however 
firm his faith, ever met a great trial, or bore a 
great sorrow, with patience and a cheerful 
submission, without first passing through a 
season of self-conflict. Even the Saviour had 
this experience, and it is this very fact that 
makes him nearer and dearer to every weary 
and suifering soul. It is a thought full of 
comfort that we have an ' ' high-priest who can 
be touched with the feeling of our infirmi- 
ties ;" for in that he himself hath suifered, he 
is able to succor all them that come unto him. 
And consider how Jesus was in the very 
bosom of God and Imew his counsels, and 
knew the saving purpose of his own death, 
and the glorious resurrection which was to fol- 
low ; and yet, when the hour of trial came. 



ATTRACTIONS OF EARTH. 167 

how great was that agony in the garden ! 
Yes, even Christ struggled with his lot, and 
exclaimed, ''O Father, if it be possible, let 
this cup pass from me ! " and it was not till 
after this struggle and sorrowful exclamation, 
that the spirit rose triumphant over the quiv- 
ering nerves and fainting pulses of the flesh, 
and uttered itself in the divine prayer : ' ' Nev- 
ertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." 

If this, then, was the experience of our 
blessed Lord, surely you must not expect, 
frail and feeble as you are, to conquer your- 
self, and sunder all the ties that bind you to 
life, in a moment^ and without any inward 
conflict. No, it will require time and effort, 
and much thought and prayer, and commu- 
nion with your own soul and with the Holy 
Spirit. And you should not accuse your faith 
or piety because it is so. God knows your 
heart, and looks upon you with compassion 
and tender pity, and will help you to over- 
come at last. He does not say to you '^sor- 
row not" — but '^ sorrow not as those who 



168 ATTRACTIONS OF EARTH. 

are without hope." He asks you to trust In 
him as a refuge and support, and to receive 
into your heart the great hope of the gospel, 
the hope of immortal life, which he has given 
as a comfort and an encouragement in the 
hour of trial. He calls upon you to appro- 
priate to yourself the blessed promises of his 
word, that ^'none of us liveth to himself, and 
no man dieth to himself, for whether we live, 
we live unto the Lord ; and whether we die, 
we die unto the Lord : whether we live there- 
fore, or die, we are the Lord's." ''For to 
this end Christ both died, and rose, and re- 
vived, that he might be L(?rd both of the dead 
and the living." And ''we know that if our 
earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, 
we have a building of God, a house not made 
with hands, eternal in the 'heavens. " 

And in parting with your loved ones, his 
Word of truth reminds you that the separa- 
tion is only for a little time. The difference 
is not that you die, and they live ; but that 
you die to-day, and they die to-morrow. It 



ATTRACTIONS OF EARTH. IGO 

is a difference of time only, and not of fact or 
condition. The same experience awaits us all. 
Life is short at the longest, only an hand- 
breadth ; and then those you leave behind 
come to join you, and you will be together 
forevermore. And till then he has promised 
to watch over them, and keep them, and cause 
ail things to work together for their good ! 
Leave them, then, in his hands, for he will 
care for them, and not a hair of their heads 
shall fall to the ground without his permission. 
And it may be that, when you have crossed 
over to the other shore, he will still permit 
you to behold them with open vision, to follow 
them in all their earthly paths, to witness their 
joys, and to understand the beneficent mean- 
ing and use of all their sorrows. The river of 
death is very narrow, and though with our 
dim earthly eyes we are not able to discover 
those on the other side ; it is possible that 
they, with their clear spiritual sight, may 
easily look over to this side. Whether it be 
so or not, go forth cheerfully trusting in God, 



170 ATTRACTIOlfS OF EARTH. 

and surrendering all your earthly treasures 
into his care, whether husband or wife, pa- 
rents or children. Go, confident that you and 
yours are the objects of his parental regard, of 
his everlastino^ love. 



^& 



If life could be always alluring and bright 

As it seems in its innocent morning, 

No shade on its prospect — sweet visions at night 

The calm of its slumber adorning — 

Too fondly and closely our spirits would trust 

In the pleasures which earth seemed to give them, 

And slowly and faintly would rise from the dust 

As if it were sorrow to leave them. 

'Tis well that some shadows flit over our way, 

Some clouds hover darkly above it. 

They teach us while Earth is a scene of decay, 

It were folly too deeply to love it j 

Its joys and its hopes, for a moment which gleam, 

Soon fade like a vision at even, 

While our spirits turn gladly from Earth's passing dream 

To the glorious sunlight of Heaven. 



X. 




Lift up thy drooping head, 
Thou who in gloom and dread 

Hast lain so long ; 
And raise thy hands and pray, 
And God will smooth thy way, 

And make thee strong. 

NE fact more demands attention before 
IIP/ closing this portion of our work. Many- 
persons, excellent in character. Chris- 
tian in faith, have an unconquerable dread of 
dying — not of being dead, not of anything 
that may come after they are dead — but of 
the supposed agony of dying. It is a very 
common belief that there Is dreadful suf- 
fering, inexpressible bodily anguish, attend- 
ant upon the process of death, or the dissolu- 



172 THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 

tion of the connection between the soul and 
the body. 

But mostly this is an entire mistake. A 
brain fever, the inflammatory rheumatism, a 
single day's endurance of severe neuralgia, has 
more torture in it than twenty deaths. As a 
rule death itself, as far as we have any data 
for a conclusion, is accompanied with compar- 
atively little or no pain, or physical suffering. 
And this for a very simple reason, where there 
is lengthened sickness, or acute disease, viz: 
the power of suffering is exhausted before it 
comes to death ; the nervous system is com- 
pletely prostrated, and the muscles relaxed ; 
and thus sensation is gradually deadened, 
pain ceases, consciousness slowly fades out, 
and the dying one is as if he were falling into 
a profound and quiet sleep. This is the pre- 
vailing witness of those who have gone down 
to the very gates of death, and returned 
again ; even in those cases where conscious- 
ness was perfect, and everything within the 
room was seen and heard and understood. 



THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 173 

without the power of expression in word or 
motion. 

The truth is, the pain is in the disease, not 
in death, and all the agony and suffering are 
over before the final moment of departure; 
and there is not only an absence of pain in 
death itself or in dying, but often the sweetest 
quiet, a blessed sense of relief and repose, and 
sometimes the most beautiful visions of coming 
light and glory. 

Touching this subject, the following, from 
high authority, will be found comforting and 
instructive : 

^'The pain of dying must be distinguished 
from the pain of the previous disease ; for 
when life ebbs, sensibility declines. As death 
is the final extinction of corporeal feelings, so 
numbness increases as death comes on. The 
prostration of disease, like healthful fatigue, 
engenders a growing stupor — a sensation of 
subsiding softly into a coveted repose. The 
so-called agony can never be more formidable 
than when the brain is the last to go, and the 



174 THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 

mind preserves to the end a rational cogni- 
zance of the state of the body. Yet persons 
thus situated commonly attest that there are 
few things in life less painful than the close. 
'If I had strength enough to hold a pen,' said 
William Hunter, 'I would write how easy 
and delightful it is to die.' 'If this is dying,' 
said the niece of Newton, 'it is a pleasant 
thing to die;' 'the very expression,' adds her 
uncle, 'which another friend of mine made 
use of on her death-bed a few years ago.' 
The same words have so often been uttered 
under similar circumstances, that we could fill 
pages with instances which are only varied by 
the name of the speaker. ' If this be dying,' 
said Lady Clenorchy, 'it is the easiest thing 
imaginable.' 'I thought that dying had been 
more difficult,' said Louis XIV. 'I did not 
suppose it was so sweet to die,' said Francis 
Suarez, the Spanish theologian. An agree- 
able surprise was the prevailing sentiment 
with them all. They expected the stream to 
terminate in the dash of the torrent, and they 



THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 175 

found it was losing itself in the gentlest cur- 
rent. The whole of the faculties seem some- 
times concentrated on the placid enjoyment. 
The day Arthur Murphy died he kept repeat- 
ing from Pope : 

* Taught half by reason, half by mere decay, 
To welcome death, and calmly pass away.' 

''A second and common condition of the dy- 
ing is to be lost to themselves and all around 
them, in utter unconsciousness. Countenance 
and gestures might in many cases suggest 
thatj however dead to the external world, an 
interior sensibility still remained. But w^e 
have the evidence of those whom disease has 
left at the eleventh hour, that while their sup- 
posed sufferings w^ere pitied by their friends, 
existence was a blank. The delirium of fever 
is distressing to witness ; but the victim 
awakes from it as from a heavy sleep, totally 
ignorant that he has passed days and nights 
tossing wearily and talking wildly." 

And what, let me add, can be more distres- 
sing to look upon than the distorted features 



176 THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 

and violent spasms which attend epileptic fits ? 
Yet it is well known that there is no suffer- 
ing in these cases ; those affected being often 
wholly unconscious even of the attack, though 
uttering the most dismal groans, and seeming 
to be in greatest agony. So what we some- 
times witness w^hen standing by the bedside 
of the dying, the convulsion of the limbs, the 
painful expression of the features, and other 
signs of suffering, are, as a rule, purely mus- 
cular, without any more pain than attends 
epileptic affections, or the sudden contraction 
and jumping of the muscles which frequently 
precedes falling asleep. And those wdio have 
recovered from this seemingly dying condition, 
which includes all there is in physical death, 
declare that, all suffering ceased before they 
reached this point, and that they were nearly 
unconscious, or in a state of perfect quiet. 

These testimonies of the dying might be in- 
creased to any extent, showing that, as a rule, 
whatever perturbations may have preceded, 
there is in the article of death itself an almost 



THE dyhstg do not suffer. 177 

entire absence both of physical and mental suf- 
fering. Heaven seems very merciful to us in 
the last hour, and, soothing all our pains, 
vouchsafes to us a quiet and peaceful depar- 
ture to tlie land of rest. Dr. Black, worn out 
by age, "and a tendency to pulmonary hemor- 
rhage, which obliged him to live very low, 
while eating his customary frugal meal, fell 
asleep, and died in so tranquil a manner, that 
he did not spill the contents of the spoon 
wlxich he held in his hand. And the death of 
Sir Charles Blagden was in much the same 
way ; for while enjoying a social meal with 
some of his intimate friends, he died in his 
chair so quietly that not a drop of the coffee 
in the cup, which he held in his hand, was 
spilled. Haller died feeling his pulse, and 
when it was almost gone, he turned to his 
brother physician, and said cheerfully, ''My 
friend, the artery ceases to beat," and quietly 
breathed his last. Petrarch and Leibnitz both 
died, the hand still holding the book they 
were reading ; and Lucan, Roscommon and 
12 



178 THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 

Klopstock died repeating their own poetry. 
Schiller, when dying, replied to an inquiring 
friend, ''I am feeling calmer and calmer." 
And the poet Keats, on being asked how he 
felt, just before he died, answered with char- 
acteristic sweetness and beauty, '^Better, my 
friend ; I feel the daisies growing over me." 

When Mozart had mven the finishino^ 
touches to that wonderful " Requiem ^^^ his last 
and sweetest composition, he fell into a quiet 
and composed slumber. On awaking, he said 
to his daughter, ^'Come hither, my Emilie, 
my task is done ; the Requiem — my Requiem 
is finished." ^'O no," said the gentle girl, 
the tears filling her eyes, ''you will be better 
now ; and let me go and bring you something 
refreshing." "Do not deceive yourself, my 
love," he replied, "I am beyond human aid; 
I am dying, and I look to Heaven's mercy 
only for aid. You spoke of refreshment — 
take these last notes of mine ; sit down by my 
piano here — sing them with the hymn of 
your sainted mother — let me once more hear 



THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 179 

those toiics which have so long been my 
solace and delight." His daughter complied, 
and, with a voice tremulous with emotion, 
sung the following : 

Spirit ! thy labor is o'er ! 
The race ot the mortal is run ; 
Thy steps are now bound for the untrodden shore, 
And the race of immortals begun. 

Spirit ! look not on the strife 
Or the pleasures of earth with regret — 
Pause not on the threshold of limitless life, 
To mourn for the day that is set. 

Spirit ! no fetters can bind, 
No -wicked have pow-er to molest ; 
There the weary, like thee, and the wretched, shall find 
A home, and a mansion of rest. 

Spirit ! how bright is the road 
For which thou art now on the wing ! 
Thy home it will be with thy Saviour and God, 
Their praises forever to sing. 

As the last notes died away into silence, 
the spirit of the great composer took its flight 
heavenward ; and as the daughter turned for 
the accustomed words of approval, she saw 
only the sweet smile of contentment which 



180 THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 

still lingered on the face of death, and re- 
vealed the unutterable peace of his dying. 

The deipsLYture of Beethoven, ^yh.ose musical 
compositions are still the delight of mankind, 
was equally beautiful and impressive. He 
was entirely deaf, and never knew the joy of 
hearing his own wonderful creations. He had 
been for some time slowly sinking away into 
the arms of death, when one day he suddenly 
revived ; and, as a bright smile lighted up his 
expressive features, he softly murmured, "I 
shall hear in heaven ! " and immediately he 
began singing in a low, but clear and distinct 
voice, one of his own beautiful hymns — and 
so passed ''over the river" into the land 
of Immortal song, and joined the choir of 
angels. 

These examples, gathered from all condi- 
tions of life and culture, have been multiplied 
for the purpose of comforting those who arc 
approaching death, and imparting courage to 
those who dread the physical suffering sup- 
posed to accompany dying. They show that 



THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 181 

the rule is the reverse of what most persons 
think it ; and that the facts, as far as we have 
them, prove that the suffering, as we have 
already said, is not in death, but in the sick- 
ness which precedes it ; that dying is very like 
falling into a quiet sleep. 

And there is mostly also an absence not 
only of bodily distress, but of mental distress. 
The fear of death, and the struggle against 
it, and all unreconciliation, seem to fade 
away as death itself approaches, and leave 
us calm and placid as a summer evening. 
It is certainly very remarkable, this almost 
universal experience. Sir James Brodie, as 
the result of his extensive practice and long 
observation, not only decides that the act of 
dying is seldom in any sense a painful pro- 
cess ; but also declares that he has ' ' never 
known but two instances in which, in the act 
of dying, there were manifest indications of 
the fear of death." 

A similar witness is given by a well-known 
lady connected with the Western Sanitary 



182 THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 

Commission, who has been present at many 
hundreds of death-scenes among the soldiers. 
In only two cases out of the multitude com- 
ing imder her observation, was there any man- 
ifest terror, or mental disturbance, at the 
approach of death. 

In confirmation of these testimonies the 
writer of this book can add the experience and 
observation of a pastoral ministry of more 
than thirty years. In very few instances out 
of hundreds dying in youth, and in old age, 
and in the full flush of meridian life, has there 
been any appearance even of great physical 
suffering ; and he cannot recall a single ex- 
ample of unconquerable terror in the act of 
dying. On the contrary, though in many 
cases there has been a fear of death during 
sickness, a dread of dying, yet when the hour 
came, it had all passed away, and in the place 
of it there was a perfect resignation, and a 
peace passing expression. 

And further illustration of this interesting- 
fact might be given, if one who has been 



THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 183 

down to the gates of death and returned 
again, might speak of his own personal expe- 
rience. But there is something sacred beyond 
speech in the memories of that solemn and 
holy time, in that sense of God's nearness, in 
that profound calm and serenity of soul, the ' 
absence of all disturbing influences both of 
body and of mind, of all regret and earthly 
longings ; the blessed consciousness of being 
held up, sustained within and without, by 
the divine power; the consciousness, too, of 
having full possession of all the faculties, 
and yet losing all thought and sense of death 
in its ordinary definitions, and feeling that the 
change tlirough which we are passing is trans- 
lation rather than dissolution ; to feel that 
slowly, silently, painlessly, we are being lifted 
out of the body, that the spirit's vision grows 
clearer and stronger, that we begin to see 
through the shadows, and far forward and on- 
ward through realms of light, almost into the 
immortal — truly, one who has had this expe- 
rience comprehends what it is to die — knows 



184 THE DYING DO NOT SUFFER. 

all there is in death, though he may yet live- 
and for him 

'Tis easy now to see 
How lovely and how sweet a pass 
The hour of death may be. 

To close the eye, and close the ear, 

Wrapped in a trance of bliss, 
And, gently drawn in loving arms, 

To swoon to that — from this : 
Scarce knowing if we wake or sleep. 

Scarce asking where we are, 
To feel all evil sink away, 

All sorrow and all care ; 

While loving spirits hover near, 

And nestle at our side, 
And into all our thoughts and prayers 

With gentle helpings glide — 
Then death between us is as naught, 

A dried and vanished stream — 
Their joy is the reality, 

Our passing life the dream. 



Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesns Christ;, the Father 
of mercies, and the God of all comfort ; who comforteth ns in all our 
tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any 
kind of trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted 
of God.— 2 Cor. i. 3,4. 



We will not weep ; for God is standing by us, 

And tears will blind us to the blessed sight ; 
We will not doubt ; if darkness still doth try us, 

Our souls have promise of serenest light. 
We will not faint ; if heavy burdens bind us, 

They press no harder than our souls can bear ; 
The thorniest way is lying still behind us, 

We shall be braver for our past despair .~- 

0, not in doubt shall be our journey's ending, 

Sin with its fears, shall leave us at the last ! 
All its best hopes in glad fulfilment blending, 

Life shall be with us still when death is past. 
Help us, Father ! when the world is pressing 

On our frail hearts, that faint without their firiend ; 
Help us, O Father ! let thy constant blessing 

Strengthen our weakness, — till the joyful end. 



I. 



Deem not that they are blest alone, 
Whose days a peaceful tenor keep ; 

The God who loves our race has shown 
A blessing for the eyes that weep. 

[T is a just observation of an eloquent 
writer, that ''sorrow as illustrated in 
Christ's life, and as interpreted in his 
scheme of religion, has assumed a new aspect, 
and yields a new meaning. Its garments of 
heaviness have become transfigured to robes 
of light, its crown of thorns to a diadem of 
glory ; and often, for some one whom the rich 
and joyful of this world pity — some suffer- 
ing, struggling, overshadowed soul — comes 
there a voice from heaven, 'This is my be- 
loved son, in whom I am well pleased.'" 



188 THE LESSONS OF SORROW. 

It is certainly true, that the suffering and 
the death of Christ, and the spirit in which 
they were met and endured, have given a new 
meaning and dignity to sorrow. And there is 
something morally grand and beautiful in it, 
when borne with sweetest patience and seren- 
ity of soul, by some frail and feeble sufferer 
who, but for the example and the religion of 
Christ, would sink under it into despair ; or 
be irritated into pitiful and useless resistance 
against that gracious Providence which is for- 
ever shaping evil to some beneficent result. 
And how many have thus been made strong 
in their weakness by the life and sorrows and 
death of* the blessed Saviour. How many 
have bowed in willing submission to the divine 
appointments, and welcomed to their souls the 
perfect peace of resignation, when they have 
come to see that they are only treading the 
path which Jesus trod before them, and trod 
too for their sake, that they might have cour- 
age to go on to the end. 

That Is a singularly significant and suggest- 



THE LESSONS OF SORROW. 189 

ive statement of the apostle: ''For ye have 
not received the spirit of bondage again to 
fear ; but ye have received the spirit of adop- 
tion, whereby we cry Abba ! Father ! The 
Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, 
that we are the children of God*: and if chil- 
dren, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint- 
heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with 
him, that we may be also glorified together." 
If so be that we suffer with him ! Is it not 
clear from this that suffering is one of the 
established ordinances of God, with specific 
reference to our spiritual discipline and exalta- 
tion? intended as a means for building up 
character, and developing our higher nature — 
in a word^ as one of the conditions of our 
heirship with Christy "that we may also he 
glorified together ? " 

And what a remarkable testimony of the 
Holy Spirit is that which says, ''It became 
him, for whom are all things, and by whom 
are all things, in bringing many sons unto 
glory, to make the Captain of their salvation 



190 THE LESSONS OF SORROW. 

perfect through sufferings." And if it were 
necessary that Christ should suffer in order to 
become perfectly fitted for the work to which 
the Father appointed him, can you expect, my 
afflicted friend, to be perfect in all things 
without suffering? Can you spare the lessons 
of sorrow which it was needful the Son of 
God should learn, preparatory to his complete 
consecration ? Are you already so trained and 
strong in spirit that you can spring at once 
to the loftiest height of heavenly exalta- 
tion, without passing through the dark valley 
marked by the bleeding feet of Jesus ? Ah, 
no — you, and all of us, need the discipline of 
sorrow and suffering to fit us for the great 
work of life ; to shape into symmetrical pro- 
portions the moral and spiritual elements 
which make up a truly divine character. 

And it is one of the first lessons which sor- 
row teaches, that life is not merely happiness, . 
in the material definition of the term, but 
virtue, usefulness, character in its largest and 
best meaning ; character as it appears in 



THE LES80NS OF SORROW. 191 

Christ; as the symbol of all that is gentle, 
generous, self-sacrificing and divine. This is 
the great end of our being ; and it is for this 
that evil is mixed with good, that the shadow 
of disappointment so often falls athwart the 
pathway of our enjoyments, that our smiles 
are sometimes so swiftly veiled in the mist 
of tears. Afflictions, losses, bereavements, 
death, are the Lord's angels in disguise, lead- 
ing us up the heights of celestial perfection 
and glory.' Through them v^^e learn to con- 
quer our weaknesses, to lift our hopes and 
desires out of the dust of our earthly life, and 
to set the spirit and its aspirations above the 
passions and demands of the flesh ; till at 
last we come to feel with the apostles that, 
*' though our outward man perish, yet the 
inward man is renewed day by day — For our 
light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eter- 
nal weight of glory ; while we look not at the 
things which are seen, but at the things which 
are not seen : for the things which are seen 



192 THE LESSONS OF SOEBOW. 

are temporal, but the things which are not 
seen are eternal. For we know that if our 
earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, 
we have a building of God, an house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 

O child of sorrow I O sad and weary suf- 
ferer ! what are all your transient griefs com- 
pared with this glorious issue? And why 
should you faint, or murmur, that you must 
for a little sow the seed in tears, if this 
be the heavenly fruitage they bear ? Why 
should you accuse the Father, and tliijik that 
discipline severe which it is in your power 
to turn into faith and holiness and spirituality ? 

If always on the thorns xny feet must tread, 
And heavy clouds hang darkly o'er my head ; 
If all the sunshine from my life depart, 
And cold, gray ashes be upon my heart ; 
If all my hopes, like swift-winged birds, must fly, 
And every flower of promise droop and die ; 
If always through a mist of gathering tears 
My eyes watch sadly for the coming years ; 
Oh, Father, when Death's river I've passed o'er, 
And my feet stand upon the further shore, 
Shall not Thy seal upon my forehead be, 
" Perfect through suffering," purified by Thee ? 



II. 

0f P^afcrm. 



Wilt thou not visit me ? 
The plant beside me feels thy gentle dew ; 

Each blade of grass 1 see, 
From thy deep earth its quickening moisture drew. 

Lord ! I need thy love 
More than the flower the dew, or grass the rain ; 

Come like thy Holy Dove, 
And let me in thy sight rejoice to live again. 

^HERE is no experience so dreary and 

desolate, and none so full of promise 

and hope, as that which, for the first 

time, reveals to us our spiritual poverty, and 

the need we have of the bread of God, the 

heavenly manna which the Gospel provides 

for the hungry soul. Who has not at times 

felt weary with himself, dissatisfied with his 
13 



194 THE soul's hunger and 

present condition of mind and heart, deeply 
conscious that he has not lived as wisely and 
truly as he should ? that he has suffered the 
world. Its gains, and pleasures, and honors, 
to sweep through his soul like a flood, bearing 
out irom it all thought and love of God? 
engulfing in the wild rush of muddy waters 
faith and prayer, mercy and purity, con- 
science, truth, all the tenderness of his heart, 
and all the spiritual beauty with which God 
had fitted up his soul In the beginning ? Who 
does not feel, when all this passes before him 
as with the swiftness and omnipresence of a 
dying man's thought, that he has been a trai- 
tor to God, and to the noblest dignities of 
his nature? and, half trembling, for the con- 
sequences of this high treason to his soul, and 
greatly sorrowful for his cold and hard ingrat- 
itude to the good God who has loved him 
through all this with so patient a love — who 
does not feel springing up within him the 
prayer of regret and penitence ? 

Without question this has sometime been 



THE BREAD OF HEAVEN. 195 

the experience of all who read this. And 
especially, docs this revelation of unworthi- 
ness, this dissatisfaction and unrest, come 
upon them after some great sorrow or bereave- 
ment has fallen on them ; or when Death has 
suddenly struck down some dear companion 
or friend, and the bolt seems scarcely to have 
missed them. Then this discontent with them- 
selves and the life they are living, then this 
home-sickness comes upon them with over- 
mastering power — as if a long-forgotten 
voice, all at once, swept up from the past, 
calling them tenderly and with the entreating, 
lingering accents of childhood : " O come back 
from your long wanderings from the Father — 
think of his love for you, of what he calls you 
to, and break from the spell which holds you 
in bondage to what is so unworthy of you ; 
which keeps you back from the nobler life you 
are capable of, from the high paths which lead 
up to the companionship' of angels ! " 

I think we have all heard these voices which 
caU us back to w^hat we were, or forward to 



196 THE soul's hungek and 

what we may be : and have felt this home- 
sickness, this longing after a more righteous 
life, after something we have not — and pre- 
eminently so, when the shadow of a great 
affliction is over us. Now to this condition of 
heart, this experience of sorrow, this hunger 
of the soul in grief, the gospeJ, in its fulness, 
brings its word of invitation and encourage- 
ment. ^'Blessed are they that hunger and 
thirst after righteousness, for they shall be 
filled." In the quickening truths of the gos- 
pel is found precisely what he wants who finds 
himself in this frame of mind ; who feels the 
long-slumbering aifections of his heart now 
wakening into life, and crying aloud for food, 
for something which shall supply their clam- 
orous wants. Here, let me say to all such, 
here in the divine doctrines and px'ecepts of 
Jesus is found that heavenly manna, that 
bread of God, which alone can answer to the 
call of this mighty famine of the soul. Here 
are the wells of living water, of which if you 
drink, you will thirst no more forever. 



THE BRETAD OF HEAVEN. 197 

Come to the gospel and you shall find, as 
no interpreter can tell you, what is the fulness 
of its blessing. Arise now, and shake the 
du«t of the world from your sandals, and put 
on the beautiful garments of the spirit, and 
God shall give you welcome. Set your face 
towards the Father's house, where there is 
bread enough and to spare ; and the devour- 
ing hunger of your' heart shall be ministered 
to, the fatted calf shall be killed, and there 
shtll be joy over you as of one lost but found 
again — dead once, but now alive forevermore. 

If this come to any who have heard these 
voices, who have seen a white hand beckoning 
them away to the cool fountains of the gospel, 
I would entreat them to follow it, till they 
come to the waters of life. If any experience 
this hungering and craving for a truer and 
holier life than they are finding in the dusty 
streets, in the marts of traffic, in the sharp 
selfishness of gain-getting, let me say to them. 
Come, O my brothers, come to the gospel, to 
the faith, and love, and prayer, which wait to 



198 THE soul's hunger and 

bless you, and to bestow a happiness that will 
fill the void of your soul. The life of which, 
now and then, in your better moments, you 
catch dim glimpses, is real and not a delusion 
or a dream. The majesty and .goodness of 
God, the worth of truth, the beauty of holi- 
ness, the sweet peace of an unaccusing con- 
science, the royal dignity of a Christian life, 
and the sublime triumph of the Christian's 
death ; the example of Christ, his great Re- 
demption, the victory of good over every fqj^ 
of evil — these which are the bread of heaven, 
and the fulness of the gospel blessing, these 
will meet the yearnings of your heart, will 
feed its deep hunger, and show you that there 
is a life— -O how much more divine and 
august than that which is lived only among 
banks and railroads, ships and merchandise — 
a life in which the soul, when these shall have 
perished in the ''wreck of matter and the 
crush of worlds," shall still unfold in ever 
new and wondrous beauty and power. 

then, my bereaved and sorrowing friend, 



THE BREAD OF HEAVEN. 199 

let tills death which has come so near to you, 
brmg you into closer relations with these great 
spiritual realities. Let your soul embrace 
them in a living faith, and appropriate the 
blessing to itself; and ere long it will rejoice 
in the new meamno; of Christ's words : "I am 
the bread of life ; he that cometh to me shall 
never hunger, and he that belie veth on me 
shall never thirst." Let this bereavement 
consecrate your thoughts and affections to 
higher aims and holier communions ; let the 
life immortal to which your beloved has been 
translated, become a familiar theme to mind 
and heart ; and by and by you will find the 
space between earth and heaven bridged over, 
and the glorified spirits will pass to and fro 
bringing blessings to your soul, as the angels 
passed over the shining ladder of Jacob's 
dream. 

Is a mighty famine now 

In thy heart and in thy soul ? 
Discontent upon thy brow ? 

Turn thee, God will make thee whole. 



III. 

C§^r0ti0^ Cribuktbtt ink i^t 
Pm5[tr0m. 



Lead us, Father ! to Thy heavenly rest, 
However rough and steep the path may be, 

Through joy or sorrow, as Thou deemest best, 
Until our lives are perfected in Thee. 

fF It were left to us, without doubt we 
should so order our life on earth that it 
would be all glad and beautiful, bright 
skies and a green earth, waving forests, and 
running streams, and lovely landscapes. No 
clouds should come between us and the sun, 
no storms should sweep over our path ; no 
disappointments nor griefs should come to us ; 
and sickness and death, and the lone house- 
hold and the long-sorrowing heart, should be 



THROUGH TRIBULATION, ETC. 201 

strangers to us and to ours. And so life 
should be to us a pleasant and merry holiday ; 
and we, like the butterfly or the humming- 
bird, with bright plumage flashing in the sun, 
would go dancing from flower to flower, stop- 
ping only long enough to gather the honey, 
and rejoice in the beauty that welcomed us 
from all sides. 

So should we make life, if God would yield 
to our vain prayers, and suflfer our will to be 
done. And were it so, how worthless would 
life be to us, and how worthless ourselves 
also. It is not thus that we get to be strong 
and worthy of God. The butterfly revels for 
a season amid beauty and fragrance, but per- 
ishes when the winter comes and the storm. 
But the eagle bravely struggles with the tem- 
pest, rises above it, and looks the burning sun 
in the face with an unflinching eye. So is it 
with us. Not by the butterfly life, but by the 
eagle's, we rise up above the storm and the 
darkness ; and the soul, with the keen and 
strong vision which it has gotten through suf- 



202 THROUGH TRIBULATIOX 

fering and faith, is able to behold God and his 
angels face to face. It is only through this 
discipline appointed of the Father, that we 
can be weaned from earth and its influences, 
and brought into communion with the infinite 
and the eternal, and the heart made to re- 
spond to, and rest in, the blessed truths of the 
gospel. 

And this, after we shall have reasoned as 
we may, and prayed as we may — this very 
tribulation and moral training which it is so 
difficult to accept at God's hand, is the great- 
est, is the best thing of all for us. Not to 
urge that it is so since God who is wisest and 
best has so ordered it, we may, if we will 
patiently and with a teachable disposition con- 
sider it, gather this important truth for our- 
selves, and so shall it do us greater good. 

Who are they who have wrought out great 
blessings for our race? who have brought 
forth good unto their fellows, and have left on 
every spot where they trod a greenness and 
fragrance which shall never die out? Not 



INTO THE KINGDOM. 203 

they who have been nursed In the lap of lux- 
ury and ease — not they whose life has been 
sunny,. and their path amid fresh flowers and 
over velvet fields. Not these ; but they who 
have been born under clouds ; who have 
growTi up amid want, and discouragements, 
and tribulations ; who have toiled up the 
mountain paths of life, amid wild ravines and 
beetling crags, facing wind and tempest, amid 
struggles and perils, till, standing upon the 
loftiest summit, bathed in sunlight, they see 
and hear the storm through which they have 
passed raging far down below them. These 
are they whom the world calls benefactors, 
and whom God, having tried, has chosen for 
his special work. These are they to whom, 
having passed through much tribulation, the 
gates of the kingdom of heaven are flung wide 
open, and free entrance given to Its glorious 
rest. 

Paul, though when elected as a servant of 
God's truth and salvation he had -hitherto 
lived amid wealth and splendor, was trained 



204 THROUGH TRIBULATION 

to his vsTork in the school of suffering, and, 
taking his life in his hand, went forth amid 
perils by land and sea, among the Jbeathen 
and false brethren, amid hunger and thirst 
and nakedness, stripes and imprisonments, 
till at last he is able to exclaim, "We glory 
in tribulations," and to lay down his life for 
the cause of God and humanity. And it was 
from the midst of agony in the garden that 
Christ exclaims, ^^Not as I will but as thou 
wilt." And it was from the cross, beneath 
the cloud of its awful suffering, that the sub- 
lime prayer for his murderers went forth, 
'' Father, forgive them." So has it always 
been. The noblest examples of faith, the 
most touching exhibitions of love, have had 
their birth in sorrow and suffering, have come 
forth like molten gold from the furnace of fire. 
So in all time the great, the useful have been 
brought up in the school of trial and adver- 
sity. Their weaknesses, their vain longings, 
the influences of the world and the things that 
are in it, have given way before the power of 



INTO THE KINGDOM. 205 

God's discipline, and in their place have come 
strength and courage, and faith, and love, 
and heavenly-mindedness. 

And do we not all need this discipline to 
correct what is evil in us, and strengthen what 
is good? Have we not all weaknesses and 
earthly longings, and worldliness and sin to 
overcome, before we can stand by the side of 
Jesus, of Paul and John? Have we not need, 
as well as others, to pass through tribulation, 
before we can enter into the kingdom of God, 
and take our place with Abraham and Isaac, 
with James and Peter, and the noble army of 
martyrs? Ah, yes; we cling to the earth; 
we cling to the things of the world, we give 
to them our first and warmest love ; we live 
as though this were our home, as if here only 
were the proper objects of our affections. 
And these blessings and gifts — they are ours, 
and if taken from us in our unworthiness we 
complain, we have been wronged, and we 
rebel against the better wisdom of God. 
From all this we need to be drawn away, for 



206 THROUGH TRIBULATION 

while in this state heaven is afar off, and we 
know not God. While in this state there is no 
real joy or peace — we know nothing of the 
higher life of the soul, nor of the kingdom 
which can now only be reached through much 
tribulation. And so the Father, who knoweth 
all this, layeth his hand upon us, and bringeth 
us into affliction, leadeth us through rough 
places and dark, into the valley of suffering and 
humiliation. Disappointment, loss of prop- 
erty, the desertion of friends, crushed hopes, 
a desolate heart, sickness and death come to 
us one after another to lay their burthens 
upon us. The beauty of life departs ; the ties 
that bound us to it have successively been 
broken. Of those that love us, more are in 
heaven than here. Old familiar voices are 
heard no more. The days have come when 
we say sadly, '^We have no pleasure in 
them ; " the shadows have fallen upon the 
bright places where we have stood, and by 
and by the dark night gathers about us, and 
we are alone ! 



INTO THE KINGDOM. 207 

And now our deliverance is at hand. God 
is not afar. The impatient and murmuring 
heart is subdued into meekness. We are 
chastened into submission, and with tearful 
eye, and a contrite and broken spirit, we pray 
as we never prayed before. Through the trib- 
ulation and suffering which the Father has 
wisely and mercifully ordered, we are getting 
forth from the night into day again — we are 
drawing near to the Idngdom of heaven, and 
its refreshing air comes with a cooling power 
upon the burning brow, and its sweet peace 
nestles down upon the weary and throbbing 
heart — and it is still — at home with God. 

Patiently then, and with a sweet submis- 
sion, let us bear whatsoever the Father may 
lay upon us. He is wiser than we, and in 
this way seeks to perfect our spiritual educa- 
tion, and to bring us forth into the infinitely 
beautiful and blessed life of faith and trust. 
Let us remember that some of the most fra- 
grant flowers that we ever gather, are taken 
from the midst of thorns, and often with 



208 THROUGH TRIBULATION 

lacerated and bleeding hands. Our dearest 
treasures always are bought at the highest 
price, and mostly are dearest because of the 
price we pay ; for so are they associated with 
memories that have become sacred through 
manifold trials and sacrifices. The rainbow, 
the child of beauty, and the prophet of hope 
and trust, comes not without the rain. It 
spans the heavens only when the clouds are 
there, and from the bosom of the storm looks 
forth upon us with its placid smile. 

With this great truth impressed upon thy 
heart, therefore, thou poor bereaved one, go 
forward, leaving God to do for thee and 
thine whatever to his infinite knowledge and 
never-changing love may seem best to be done. 
Be sure what he determines is best. Nothing 
else will do for thee so desirable and profitable 
a work as this trial to which God has called 
thee. It may be severe ; the draught may be 
very bitter ; but O, drink it to the last, though 
thy hand tremble and thy lip quiver. It will 
do thee good, and thou wilt bless him for 



INTO THE KINGDOM. 209 

it by and by from thy heart of hearts. 
Thou hast need of tlie lessons thou art learn- 
ing. Thou hast found thine own strength 
to be weakness, and now thou wilt seek ta 
stand in God's strength. Thou hast thought 
of life only, as if it were forever ; now thou 
wilt think of death, and learn to look it in 
the face without fear. Thou hast had thy 
hopes and treasures all on the earth ; thou 
wilt have them in heaven now, and the way 
will be shorter. Be of cheerful heart then, 
and faint not, for the Lord is thy refuge, and 
he will comfort thee. 

" When Israel from his place of shame, 
The Egyptian land of bondage, came, 

By doubt and terror bowed ; 
Tho' legions on her path did pour, 
And trackless waters rolled before, 
God led the host in safety o'er. 

By pillared fire and cloud. 

*' So in man's pilgrimage below, 
In all his wandering and woe. 

See God's sustaining hand ; 
His winds breathe o'er the troubled tide. 
His words the opposing waves divide, 
He leads, a never-failing guide, 

On to the better land." 

14 



IV. 

ma in '§dubxns. 



Aud thou, who o'er thy friend's low bier 

Sheddest the hitter drops like rain. 
Know that a brighter, happier sphere 

Shall give him to thy arms again. 
For God hath marked each anguished day, 

And numbered every secret tear ; 
And heaven's long age of bliss shall pay 

For all his children suffer here. 

^HAT a blessed heritage of strength 
and trust, of peace and comfort, we 
have in the gospel of our Lord. 
What help to us in our vreakness, what a 
soothing balm to the lacerated heart, when 
the objects of our affection are taken from us, 
to know that they are, by the mercy of God, 
lifted into a higher and more blessed life than 




PEACE TN BELIEVING. 211 

they could ever have attained to on earth. 
How it lightens our burthen to feel assured 
that much as we lose by their death and de- 
parture, they gain infinitely more than we 
lose. We love them ; and that it is why it 
IS so hard to part with them, why our sorrow 
is 60 sharp and keen — we love them ; and 
that is the reason why we struggle against 
our tears, knowing that they are glorified in 
heaven. It is for ourselves only that we 
grieve, not for them ; and when we think of 
all the evils they have escaped, and of all the 
joys they have won, we feel that it would be 
selfishness to wish them back again. 

We cannot be indifferent to the loss of their 
society, to our loneliness, to the vacancy in 
our hearts, to the silence and shadow which 
brood over the places they filled in our homes. 
The most perfected Christian on earth must 
mourn when the precious jewels of his house- 
hold are taken away, when the objects of his 
most tender regard are shut from his sight in 
the cold, dark grave. God knows that we are 



212 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

of the dust, and not of iron. He knows the 
well-springs of human affection in our hearts, 
and the pain with which we see a great hope 
crushed, or a great joy leave us. He does 
not therefore tell us that we must not sorrow, 
but only that we should not sorrow as thosie 
who are without hope. 

''Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, 
even our Father, which hath loved us, hath 
given us everlasting consolation and good 
hope through grace," that we might be strong 
in the day of bereavement. The resurrection 
of Christ has shown us that the dear ones 
who leave us ''are not lost, but gone before" 
to the life immortal ; that the body only re- 
turns to the dust whence it came, but the 
spirit to God who gave it ! This is the Chris- 
tian's hope and faith respecting the departed ; 
and he finds comfort, joy even, in his sorrow, 
persuaded that the dead, the beloved one who 
has passed "over the river," has gained the 
crown of immortal life and joy. He can say 
therefore, in truth, 



PEACE IN BELIEVING. 213 

" All thy toils and cares arc over ; 

AVeary pilgrim take thy rest ; 
God in mercy hath recalled thee 

To thy place among the blest ; 
And though now we miss and mourn thee, 

Ours are not despairing tears ; 
Wdl we know we all shall meet thee, 

In a few revolving years." 

O how blessed, how beautiful is the Chris- 
tian faith to the mourner who bends over the 
dying, or stands at the grave of one who has 
been loved wdth deepest tenderness. What a 
celestial light is sent down into the valley of 
death by the glad promise of the gospel, the 
promise that love Is immortal, that the affec- 
tions which bind us so strongly together here 
cannot be gathered Into the grave, cannot die 
at all. What peace and resignation in the 
thought, that they who leave us live on as 
though they had not left us, — nay, do now 
live more truly than ever before, in a world 
the glories and the joys of which eye hath not 
seen, nor the heart conceived. 

The transformation which lifts the painfully 
crawling worm from the dust of the earth into 



214 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

the pure air above it ; and, giving it the light 
and gorgeous wings of the butterfly, sends it 
glancing through the sunny atmosphere, float- 
ing amid beauty and fragrance and glad- 
ness, — this is nothing compared to the glo- 
rious and heavenly change which death and 
the resurrection open to the soul, when the 
body falls away from it, and it rises out of 
earthly life, on angel wings, into the splendor 
and joy of the celestial ! We cannot estimate 
the greatness or blessedness of it by any pow- 
ers of arithmetic, by any severity of logic. 
Faith only can approach the wealth of its 
glory, and even with this we see as through a 
glass darkly ; and it is only when we shall 
have reached the heavenly land itself, and be- 
come partakers, that we can understand how 
great is the heritage of bliss to which our loved 
ones go, when death leads them away from us. 
What a power, then, in the gospel to com- 
fort us, and what a soft light rests on the 
graves of the departed. We may sometimes 
go out to them, and we may weep even, but 



PEACE IN BELIEVING. 215 

the tears of hope, and of joy even, for the 
glory the dead have gone to, mingle with the 
tears of sorrow for our own bereavement. 
They are not lost to us ; they live, and love 
us still. They have gone to the spirit land 
only a little before us ; and they do not 
forget us, but expect our coming. There 
they rejoice, 

" In the broad fields of heaven, 

In the immortal bowers. 
By life's clear river dwelling, 

Amid undying flowers, — 
There hosts of beauteous spirits, 

Fair children of the earth, 
Linked in bright bands celestial, 

Sing of their human birth. 

m 

'* They sing of earth and heaven, — 

Divinest voices raise 
To God, their gracious Father, 

Who called them to the skies ; 
They are all there, — in heaven, — 

Safe^ safe and sweetly blest ; 
No cloud of sin can shadow 

Their bright and holy rest." 

Blessed be God for this blissful assurance 
of faith, which takes the sting from death, and 
illumines the gloom of the grave with the 



216 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

morning light of the resurrection ; and within 
it shows us our beloved rejoicing in their new, 
immortal life ; glad forevermore in the smiles 
of God ! 

Blessed be the Saviour who has shown us 
by his own death and triumph that death is 
conquered, that all whom it has separated 
shall be reunited in the mansions above. 
Blessed be his name for the dear promise that, 

" No lingering hope, no parting sigh, 

Our future meeting knows — 
But love beams forth from every eye, 

And hope immortal grows, — 
The sacred hope, the blissful hope, 

Which his rich grace has given ; 
The hope vfhm days and years are passed, 

We all shall meet in heaven ! " 



§mtli of Pttsbantr at WiifL 




" Who never mourned, hath never known what treasures grief 
reveals — 
The sympathies that humanize, the tenderness that heals — 
The power to look within the vail and learn the heavenly- 
lore — 
The key-word of life's mysteries, so dark to us before." 

^HAT a desolation there is In the very 
sound of this title, the sound which 
It brings to the heart rather than the 
ear ! When the Wife lies cold and still within 
the coffin, or Is carried out from the house 
that she has made a heaven on earth — the 
dear being who has from the first commanded 
all our thoughts and affections, who has been 
the centre of our alms and ambitions, the 
thought of whom has made our heaviest toll 



218 DEATH OF HUSBAND OK WIFE. 

light, and driven away all weariness, and 
renewed our youth as the eagle's — O when 
she is dead^ when this terrible fact, so hard for 
us to master at first, breaks In upon us In all 
Its agonizing reality. It Is as If the sun had 
been blotted from out the heavens, and uni- 
versal night had fallen on the world. What 
Is there now left for us ! what happiness is 
possible In which she has no part ? What is 
home without her who gave It all Its worth 
and joy, whose virtues adorned It, whose 
smile was Its light, and her presence its life ? 

When the labor or the business of the day 
is over, how painful and dismal, beyond ex- 
pression, the return to the domestic sanctuary 
where she was the Idol, the sacred object of 
our worship ; and wandering from room to 
room, to know and feel that the temple is 
deserted, and that we are alone — alone with 
our sorrow ! 

There she used to sit, nestled In that corner, 
surrounded with the sweet confusion of her 
needle-work, with the implements and evi- 



DEATH OF HUSBAND OR WIFE. 219 

dences of her pleasing industry — there are 
her favorite books ; and there the instrument 
over whose keys her facile fingers flew with 
grace and power, bringing out the most deli- 
cious melodies, kindling the soul at will with 
devotion or delight — everything is in its place, 
but the presiding spirit, she who gave life to 
all, is departed forever. What inexpressible 
grief there is in this crushing thought — de- 
parted forever^ no more to come back to me, 
no more to welcome me, when the busy day 
is done, to this home that was so pleasant to 
us, but now so desolate to me ! 

So feels and speaks the stricken sufferer 
whose second self has gone down to the grave, 
and left him to complete the work, and finish 
the journey of life alone. And is not all this 
what we might expect where the blow has 
lately fallen, and the wound is yet fresh and 
bleeding ? Is it not the natural language of a 
bereaved and desolate heart ? 

And so when the wife is called to part with 
an indulgent and beloved Husband, O the 



220 DEATH OF HUSBAND Oil WIFE. 

anguish and torture which come, when, bend- 
ing over the dying one, the last convulsive 
breath is heaved, the last fluttering pulse dies 
out, and the dear face settles down into the 
rigidity of death. 

And then what hallowed and tender memo- 
ries come thronging up from the past. In 
how many thousand ways does her dreadful 
loss press upon her. And how perpetually, 
as the days and weeks go by, is she reminded 
of the happiness which was, but can never be 
again for her ; of the many kindly words and 
acts which blessed her life. How aiFectionate 
and thoughtful he always was. How often 
his own patience and tender assiduities lifted 
off the burthen from my heart, and soothed 
my spirit troubled with household cares, 
or vexed with social annoyances. However 
clouded the day, his coming made the evening 
pleasant and cheerful — and we always went 
to our rest, the childi^en happy in so kind a 
father, and I thanking God in my heai*t for so 
loving a husband. 



DEATH OF HUSBAND OR WIFE. 221 

He was the strong oak to which I clung as 
the vine cHngs to its support ; all the tendrils 
of my life, affections, thoughts, wishes and 
aims, twining closely around him. I leaned 
upon him with a sweet and welcome sense of 
dependence, confident that he would shelter 
me from all the storms of life, and stand be- 
tween me and all danger and trouble. There 
was a blessed sense of security in my thought 
of him, knowing that in every doubt and diffi- 
culty he would guide me, and in my weakness 
be to me strength and courage. But all this 
is now passed away ; my heart, my hopes, my 
courage, are buried in the grave with him, and 
I sink down helpless, crying out with the 
Psalmist, "O my God, my soul is cast down 
within me ; for all thy waves and thy billows 
are gone over me." 

It would be idle to say that these feelings 
Sre unreasonable and wicked. They are nat- 
ural and inevitable. The merciful God knows 
this, knows that when we are bereaved in this 
way, when the beauty of our life perishes, we 



222 DEATH OF HUSBAND OR WIFE. 

must suffer and lament for our loss. He does 
not say ''Sorrow not;" but only this, ''Sor- 
row not as those who are without hojjeJ^ We 
are not without hope ; not without faith, that 
under his direction all things come to pass for 
some wise and beneficent end ; that evil and 
good, grief and joy, death and life, are equally 
the ministers of his mercy. And you, sad 
and unhappy mourner, who just now repeated 
the anguish cry of the Psalmist — you should 
have gone a little farther, and heard him after- 
ward, from the deeps of his affliction, lifting 
up the sublime prayer of resignation and 
trust: "All thy waves and thy billows are 
gone over me, ijet the Lord will command his 
loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the 
night his song shall be with me, and my 
prayer unto the God of my life. . . . Why 
art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art 
thou disquieted within me ? hope thou in God* 
for I shall yet praise him, who is the health 
of my countenance and my God." 

This was the faith of David in the most 



DEATH OF HUSBAND OR WIFE. 223 

grievous trial of his life ; and why should It 
not be yours ? Was the Jewish dispensation 
clearer than the Christian Is In regard to the 
beneficent purpose of evil ? Did the Psalmist 
look at death and the world beyond from a 
higher stand-point than the true disciple of 
him who, <' through death, destroyed death," 
and '^ brought life and immortality to light?" 
It Is a sore afHIctlon, this loss of yours ; but 
then how great Is the comfort wherewith God 
comforteth all those who are In any kind of 
trouble. How precious 

" The hope, the blissful hope. 
Which Jesus' grace hath given ; 
The hope when days and years are past, 
We all shall meet in heaven." 

Beside, ought you not to temper the pas- 
sionateness of your grief, by remembering that 
you knew all this In the day when you gave 
your heart to your beloved. You knew that 
you were not always to live together on earth ; 
that you and your companion must die, each 
one at the time appointed, and that one of 



224 DEATH OF HUSBAND OR WIFE. 

you must die first. And now think for a 
little calmly : you know what you who re- 
main suffer by this separation ; and you be- 
lieve without doubt that it is well with the 
departed, that the bliss of heaven is attained. 
Do you then wish that you had gone first, 
and that your companion had been left to 
suffer all the anguish which wrings your heart, 
to experience the terrible loneliness which op- 
presses you, and to bear the heavy burthen of 
life unblessed by the sweet sympathy of kin- 
dred affection ? This must, from the necessity 
of the case, be the lot of one of you ; and, 
loving as you do, if the choice had been given 
you, to which would you have assigned it? 
O is it not better, then, as God has ordered 
it? When seen from this point of view, 
can you not say, "Thy will, O God,*" be 
done!" Since the separation must come, 
since one must bear the sharp pain of 
bereavement, and walk in darkness and soli- 
tude, would you not rather choose it for 
yourself, than for the object of your affec- 



DEATH OF HUSBAND OR WIFE. 225 

lion? Is not this the magnanimity of true, 
unselfish love ? 

And then, on the other hand, consider the 
glory of that translation which has lifted your 
companion out of the earthly into the heav- 
enly. Think not that this is only a kind eflTort 
to comfort you ; it is the grandest fact of the 
Christian revelation, this freedom and growth, 
this immortal joy to which our beloved go 
when they pass ^^over the river." And 
surely, if our affection for them is what it 
should be, wise and unselfish, how great 
soever the loss to us, we should rejoice for 
their sake. One who has spoken well on this 
point, says : — 

' ' We blame no one that for his own sake 
he feels the pangs of separation, but we do 
wonder that there is no more generosity in the 
love which we bear to our dear ones ; and 
that the full and glorious certainties which 
illumine their condition when they have passed 
beyond us, do not cast back some light of joy 
upon our grief! We mourn as those who 
15 



226 DEATH or HUSBAND OR WIFE. 

have no hope ; whereas our mightiest griefs 
should be imbosomed in hope and calm cer- 
tainties of joy. What copious tears we shed 
because God will bring up our babes for us I 
With what frantic sorrow do we beat our- 
selves because our heart-companions are sud- 
denly translated into all honor, and nobleness, 
and purity, and ecstacy of joy ! When the 
golden gate is opened, and our beloved ones 
pass through, we may be sad that we are left 
in the drear wilderness, but not that they have 
entered the city of their coronation ! If we 
could but break down by our faith and imag- 
ination the barrier which our senses interpose ; 
if we could but walk the garden-road, and 
move through the celestial air, beholding the 
fulfilment of the earthly promise, witnessing 
the perfection of what we know in error and 
confusion ; if we could but assure ourselves of 
the lustrous beauty, the glorious largeness and 
liberty, the wonderful purity and joy of those 
whom God hath called and crowned with 
immortality ; unless we were petrified with 



DEATH OF HUSBAND OR WIFE. 227 

selfishness, we should lay aside our sorrow in 
overmeasure, and break forth with thanksgiv- 
ing. Since only days and weeks are between 
us and those who have gone before, since joy 
and sorrow alike, and the whole course of 
earthly experiences, are bearing us straight 
onward to the same abode, it would seem 
the very wantonness of unregulated grief not 
to find consolation and patience, yea, and 
a sobered gladness, that we are known in 
heaven by our forerunners ! " 

The mourners came at break of day 

Unto the garden-sepulchre, 
With sorrowing hearts to weep and pray 

For him whom they had buried there. 
What radiant light dispels the gloom ? 
An angel sits beside the tomb ! 

Then mourn we not beloved dead — 
E'en while we come to weep and pray, 

The happy spirit far hath fled 
To brighter realms of endless day ! 

Immortal hope dispels the gloom ; 

An angel sits beside the tomb ! 



VI. 

Comfort tlj£ C^filirrm. 



comfort the little ones ; think of their grief, 

When Death bears the mother away ; 
Forget thine own sorrow to bring them relief. 

And teach the young heart how to pray — 
lead the poor lambs to the Shepherd above, 
And leave them to rest in the arms of his love. 

d^/N reply to what is said in the preceding 
section, you may ans\^er that you are 
thankful for the faith which reveals an 
inheritance of liberty and joy for the de- 
parted ; but that your own loss, which is 
heavy enough, is made doubly so by the sor- 
row of dear children who have been deprived 
of a dear parent. Yes, but have not these 
children a claim upon you for help and conso- 
lation? Is it not a duty, as far as is in your 



COMFORT THE CHILDREN. 229 

power, to master your own sorrow, that you 
may minister unto theirs? They are young 
and helpless — perhaps this is their first great 
grief. Their thoughts of God and his provi- 
dence, of life and death, of the present and 
the future, are not as matured as yours ; their 
faith is not yet ripened, and they cannot lean 
upon it for support and comfort. It is their 
privilege, therefore, to look to the surviving 
parent for that sweet and intelligent sympathy 
which equally soothes and sustains. Death is 
a mystery to them — and Heaven and the 
spiritual existence? they are afar off, and lie 
vaguely in their thought. They need the in- 
struction and guidance of a parent's loving* 
heart, that their grief may be assuaged, their 
tears dried, and their eyes lifted toward 
the realms of light. Comfort them, then, 
and help to lift the shadow from their 
hearts, and to lead them in the way of life 
everlasting. 

Is it a Father who has gone from them? 
Then for their sake, O Mother, control your 



230 COMFORT THE CHILDREN. 

grief, and teach and console them by hopeful 
words, by an humble Christian resignation, 
and by lifting their thoughts from death to 
the Life Immortal, from the temporary separa- 
tions of earth to the eternal re-unions of 
Heaven. Inspire them with cheerful views 
touching the discipline of sorrow, the mission 
of death, and the glory and ineffable happiness 
of the world beyond the river. Through this 
bereavement lead their hearts to God and the 
Saviour, and help them to feel that they have 
a Father in heaven, whose providential care 
enfolds them, whose love blesses them, and 
whose divine law is their safe and sure road 
to usefulness, honor, and abiding peace. In 
this way you will comfort them and comfort 
yourself; you will keep the head and the 
heart busy in the beautiful work of parental 
culture, and soothe to rest the bitter thoughts 
which otherwise will fling their gloom over all 
your life. And in what way better than 
this can you honor the memory of their 
father-, or secure the loving smile of appro- 



COMFORT THE CHILDREN. 231 

batlon from the glorified spirit of your hus- 
band in heaven? 

Is it a Mother of whom these children have 
been bereaved? Ah, then, my brother, what 
great, yet pleasing, duties fall to your lot, if 
you would make good the place of one who, 
of all others, is necessarily nearest and dearest 
to the lambs of the flock. Sorrowfully is this 
impressed upon you ; and you are ready to 
say, as dear as she was to you, and great as 
is the anguish caused by her death, that the 
sharpest pain comes when you think of the 
children deprived of a mother, a mother who, 
in joy and sorrow, in health and sickness, was 
their guide, their refuge, their comforter, their 
all. 

But what a sweet relief to your overbur- 
thened heart, when, as the evening comes on, 
remembering her last words, and all the earn- 
est longings of the mother's heart, you sit and 
talk with them of her ; and recount all her 
virtues, all her wishes and prayers in their 
behalf, and all her hopes and aims respecting 



232 COMFORT THE CHILDREN. 

their future. Will not the hours devoted to 
this grateful service be blessed to- your own 
consolation, and establish a holy communion 
between you and the spirit of their sanctified 
mother ? In leading their thoughts up to her, 
will not your own heart go with them ? Will 
not heaven become more real to you, and her 
spirit seem nearer, and he nearer^ and more 
visible to the clairvoyant eye of faith? And 
will not your grief pass away in this blessed 
fellowship of soul ? and the glory of the future 
be reflected back through all the gloom of the 
present? And so, for this, will your heart 
draw nigh to the dear Saviour, who suffered 
and died, that we might have this "strong 
consolation," this ' ^ hope which is as an anchor 
of the soul, both sure and steadfast, entering 
into that within the veil." And thus will it 
be revealed to you, how all our trials and 
griefs and bereavements clothe themselves at 
last in garments of light ; and become, as it 
were, rounds in the shining ladder by which 
we climb up to God and heaven. 



COMFORT THE CIIILDHEN. 23S 

The following exceedingly beautiful and 
touching lines, written some time since by one 
who was approaching the banks of the river, 
are a most eloquent and effective expression of 
this thought. They bear the title of ^'The 
Dying Wife and Mother." 



Lay the gem xrpon my bosom, let me feel her sweet, warm breath, 
For a strange chill o'er me passes, and I know that it is deafh ; 
I would gaze upon the treasure, scarcely given, before I go ; 
Feel her rosy, dimpled fingers wander o'er my cheek of snow. 

I am passing through the waters, but a blessed shore appears ; 
Kneel beside me, husband, dearest, let me kiss away thy tears ; 
Wrestle with thy grief, my husband, strive from midnight until 

day; 
It may prove an angel's blessing when it vanishes away. 

Lay the gem upon my bosom, 'tis not long she can be there ; 
See ! how to my heart she ijestles — 'tis the pearl I love to wear ; 
If in after years beside thee, sits another in my chair — 
Though her voice be sweeter music, and her face than mine more 
fair; 

If a cherub call thee.father, far more beautiful than this. 
Love my first-born ! oh, my husband ! turn not from the mother- 
less. 
Tell her sometimes of her mother — you can call her by my name ; 
Shield her from the winds of sorrow — if she errs, oh, gently blame ! 



234 COMFOET THE CHILDREN. 

Lead her sometimes where I'm sleeping, I will answer if she calls ; 
And my breath will stir her ringlets, when nfy voice in blessing 

falls ; 
And her soft blue eyes will brighten, and she'll wonder whence it 

came — 
In her heart when years pass o'er her, she will find her mother's 

name. 

It is said that every mortal walks between two angels here ; 
One records the ill, but blots it, if before the midnight drear 
Man repenteth ; if uncanceled then, he seals it for the skies, 
And the right hand angel weepeth, bowing low with veiled eyes. 

I will be her right hand angel, sealing up the good for heaven. 
Striving that the midnight watches find no misdeed unforgiven ; 
You will not forget me, husband, when I'm sleeping 'neath the sod, 
Love the jewel God has given us, as I love thee, next to God. 



YII. 

CIj^ §tni^ of CIjilDrm. 




Gone, we know not from what suffering, 

Pled, we know not from what sin — 
ye gates that open heavenward, 

Swing together, shut them in ! 

SAD thing it is when a little child dies, 
sad for the loving parents, sad for the 
ehild^s brothers and sisters, sad for all 
the household. It was a sweet little prattler, 
the joy of the mother's heart, the hope and 
pride of the father, and the delight of all the 
children. It was so gentle and loving, so 
winning in its ways, so intelligent and observ- 
ing ; it filled so large a space in the thoughts, 
and cares, and affections of the mother; it 
was in so many places about the house, it put 



236 THE DEATH OF CHILDREN. 

SO many things into disorder by its frolicsome 
mirth, its sweet voice made such music every- 
where, it was so much company, it uttered 
such wise sayings and such great words, and 
asked so many and such strange questions ; 
why it seems, when it went aAvay, as if it 
took the whole house with it, as if everything 
was gone, and only silence and sorrow left. 

Or it may be that your child was no longer 
a little child, but had passed on to half a score 
or more of years — a pleasant, manly, robust 
boy, full of life, full of generous impulses, 
genial, affectionate, ambitious, always hopeful 
and happy, making the house merry with his 
songs and jests, — 

Or, perhaps, the opposite of this in some 
things, he might have been a quiet, thought- 
ful, retiring lad ; never very strong, never 
fond of the rough sports of boys brimming 
over with animal life ; loving the house better 
than the street, fond of his books, living a 
kind of dreamy life, often speaking of religious 
things,' asking mother strange questions of 



THE DEATH OF CHILDREN. 237 

God and heaven and angels and the dead ; 
all his thouglits and conversation, the pale 
spiritual face, and the frail and feeble body, 
prophetic of an early departure, — 

Or, the dear child that has left you may 
have been a gentle and loving daughter ; one 
of those sweet children we sometimes see, who 
seem as if they had strayed from heaven, and 
unknowingly found their way down to earth ; 
and, with a half-homesick feeling, were waiting 
patiently for the Messenger to come and take 
them home again. She went about the house 
so lightly and pleasantly, that she seemed to 
float like a spirit rather than to walk ; a soft 
smile ever lighting up her expressive features, 
never without- a flower in her hand or iri her 
hair, or somewhere about her dress ; secreted 
oftentimes for hours alone in some hidden 
corner, in the house, in the garden, among 
the shrubbery, murmuring in low voice some 
pleasant strain of music, reading, or fondling 
some pet ; or perhaps wholly absorbed in 
thoughts beyond her years, — 



238 THE DEATH OF CHILDREN. 

Of such sort as one of these may have been 
the child that Death has taken in his arms 
and borne away from you — and O what a 
difference it has made in your home and your 
heart ! How it has changed the tone and 
color of your thoughts , and taken the warmth 
and beauty out of your life, and darkened all 
the hopes and ambitions that were linked in 
with the future of the beloved child. How 
tasteless and unsatisfying is all pleasure, how 
dull and uninteresting the book you are read- 
ing, how little you sympathize in the idle talk 
of your visitors, how everything in the world 
has lost its point and meaning for you. 

But, after all, is this as it should be? Is 
this such an expression of confid^ence and sub- 
mission toward your Heavenly Father, as he 
is entitled to ? Is this a state of mind and 
heart becoming a Christian believer? And 
does it show that self-appropriation of the 
blessed promises of God, and of the sweet 
consolations of Christ, which we have a right 
to expect from one who has so long enjoyed 



THE DEATH OF CHILDREN. 239 

the benefits of religious instruction, and all 
the privileges of the Lord's sanctuary ? 

Has not God taken the child you love so 
tenderly to heaven, to immortal life and bles- 
sedness? and does not your grief therefore 
border on the selfish ? Do you not lose sight 
of what your child has gained, in your blind 
lamentation for what you have lost ? Surely 
^'it is well with the child," and ought not this 
to soothe you and comfort you? It is lifted 
out of all sorrow and suffering forevermore, 
and is not this something to be thankful for ? 
Why then this utter desolation of heart, this 
weeping as though nothing were left you to 
be thankful for ? 

It is said of the lady of Sir Stamford 
Kaffles, in India, that' she was overwhelmed 
with grief for the loss of a favorite child, and 
was unable to bear even the light of day. 
She was lying on her couch, with a feeling of 
desolation that was fast growing into despair, 
when she was addressed by a poor, ignorant 
woman, one of the native converts, who had 



240 THE DEATH OF CHILDREN. 

been employed in the nursery : "I am come," 
said the woman, '^because you have been here 
many days shut up in a dark room, and no 
one dares to come near you. Are you not 
ashamed to grieve in this manner, when you 
ought to be thanking God for having given 
you the most beautiful child that ever was 
seen ? Did any one ever see him or speak of 
him without* admiring him ? And instead of 
letting this child remain in this world till he 
should be worn out with trouble and sorrow, 
has not God taken him to heaven in all his 
beauty ? For shame I leave off weeping, and 
let me open a window." 

What a lesson there is here for you ! How 
much is there in that thought, that perhaps 
the child is taken away*from the evil to come. 
At any rate, now there are no more anxieties 
in this regard on your part, no more fears nor 
tremblings lest it may be the prey of disease, 
or fall into evil, or be led away into some 
temptation. All this is over now ; the pure- 
minded and generous boy, the gentle and 



THE DEATH OF CHILDREN. 241 

lovely girl, are safely removed from all these 
perils ; and in all their freshness and beauty, 
before they knew any real wrong or sorrow, 
they are walking with the angels. 

They at least are safe Jrom falling 

On the battle-iaeld of life, 
Overcome, as thousands have been 

By temptation, care, and strife ; 
And have died with hands close gathered 

In the tender clasp of ours — 
God be thanked that we could fold them 

Pure as snow, and full of flowers ! 

So, with Love's divinest token, 

Yielded to a tenderer care 
Than the home below could give them, 

Or our human weakness bear, 
They are safe from pain and sorrow ; 

Cheerfully we'll bear the rod, 
"With these blossoms safely nurtured 

In the garden of our God. 

But they were so dear to us, so young and 
beautiful, just opening into life ; and they 
would have been such a comfort and a joy to 
us if they had lived ~- we cannot help mourn- 
ing for their death ; it is so hard to see the 
sweet blossoms wither and fall. Yes, this is 
16 



242 THE DEATH OF CHILDREN. 

true ; and it brings to me another thought 
which has sometimes risen within me, when 
meditating on the death of children. I have 
compared them to young trees In a nursery, 
set out only for a time, for the express pur- 
pose of being removed, and at the fitting sea- 
son transplanted to another and more suitable 
place, where they may grow Into symmetry, 
beauty and fruitage, without hindrance or in- 
terruption. Is it not so with children, trans- 
planted from earth to heaven, only that they 
may grow into larger life, and expand into 
greater beauty and glory, free from all the 
defects and imperfections of this lower world ? 
And is It not with God, as with the gardener, 
that he sometimes, for special reasons, selects 
the fairest, the most symmetrical and promis- 
ing for removal and transplantation ? 

But let us hear again a writer already 
quoted, who says in the true spirit of resigna- 
tion and faith, 

''When God gives me a babe, I say, 'I 
thank God for this lamp lit in my family.' 



THE DEATH OF CHILDKEN. 243 

And when, after it has been a light in my 
household for one or two years, it pleases 
God to take it away, I can take the cup bitter 
or sweet : I can say, ' My light is gone out ; 
my heart is sacked ; my hopes ai*e desolated ; 
my child is lost — my child is lost ! ' or I can 
say in the spirit of Job, 'The Lord gave, and 
the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the 
name of the Lord.' It has pleased God to 
take five children from me ; but I never lost 
one, and never shall. When I have a child 
that Christ covets, with a divine coveting, and 
he says to me, in words of tenderness, 'Will 
you not give me the child, and let me take 
care of it, instead of yourself?' my flesh may 
remonstrate, but my heart says, 'Lord, take 
it and adopt it.' I have lived long enough 
since the taking, away of my children, to find 
that it is better as it is, than that they should 
have remained with me. 

"As believers in Christianity, which reveals 
God as our Father, and heaven as our eternal 
home, it is our privilege to feel that when our 



244 THE DEATH OF CHILDREN. 

children are taken from us, they are not lost 
to us, but only pass on before us to the 
spirit world, to become angelic beings around 
the burning throne of God and the Lamb. 
Jesus declared that of such is the kingdom of 
heaven. They have gone up to live with the 
crowned immortals, to be watched for and 
cared for by the angels of light, and we 
doubt not that they will be among the first 
to welcome us among the shining courts on 
High." 

What a pleasing and consoling truth, that 
the little one whom you folded to your heart 
with such fervent tenderness, is waiting over 
the river to welcome you with even greater 
affection, greater because It Is divine and ever- 
lasting. How delightful the thought that you 
have a child in heaven ! Perhaps hitherto 
heaven has been in your thought as a kind of 
foreign land, afar off, in which you had little 
or no interest, and about whicli you had no 
desire to hear. You. had no friends there; 
no member of your family was a dweller in 



THE DEATH OF CIIILDKEN. 245 

that seemingly distant region ; no treasure of 
yours was laid up there. 

But now, how different ! Now, that your 
dear child has gone to reside there, heaven is 
no longer a foreign country, no longer afar 
off, but near to you. And you think of it 
constantly, and love to hear and talk about it, 
and when the time comes you will go with 
sweet anticipations of meeting, and being wel- 
comed by, your angel child. 

*' Sometime ago," says a pleasing writer, 
' ' I was at the funeral of the child of a pastor ; 
and when the neighboring minister, who had 
been called to bury his brother's child, had 
closed his words of sympathy and comfort, 
the stricken father rose — the house in which 
we were assembled stood on a hillside, over- 
looking a beautiful river, and on the other 
side 'sweet fields stood dressed m living 
green.'" The pastor went on to say — and 
there was a strange power and beauty in the 
words as they fell from his lips in the midst 
of tears — "Often, as I have stood on the 



246 THE DEATH OF CHILDKEN. 

borders of this stream, and looked over to the 
fair fields on the other shore, I have felt but 
little interest in the people or the place in full 
view before me. The river separates me from 
them, and my thoughts and affections were 
here. But a few months ago one of my chil- 
dren moved across to the other side, and took 
up his residence there. Since that time my 
heart has been there also. In the morning 
when I rise and look out toward the east, I 
think of my child who is over there ; and 
again ^ and again through the day I think of 
him, and the other side of the river is always 
in my thoughts with the child who has gone 
there to dwell. And now since another of 
my children has crossed the river of death, 
and has gone to dwell on the other side, my 
heart is drawn out toward heaven and the 
inhabitants of heaven, as it was never drawn 
before. I supposed that heaven was dear to 
me ; that my Father was there, and my friends 
were there, and that I had a great interest in 
heaven — hut I had no child there ! Now I 



THE DEATH OF CHILDREN. 247 

have ; and I never think aiid never shall think 
of heaven, but with the memory of that dear 
child who is to be among its inhabitants 
forever." 

In the Scottish hills as a Shepherd strolled 

In the eve with his ancient crook, 
He found a lamb that was young and chilled 

By the side of a purling brook- 

And fearing the lamb might sicken and die — 
Or from its mother's side might roam — 

He carried it up with a tender care 
To a fold in his highland home. 

'Mid the dreary night — o'er the craggy peaks — 
Through the winds, and the storms and cold, 

The mother followed her captured lamb 
To the door of the Shepherd's fold. 

Once we had a lamb by its mother's side — 

It was artless and pure and mild — 
The dearest lamb in our own dear flock, 

Was the pale little blue-eyed child ! 

But a shepherd came when the sun grew low, 

By a path that has long been trod, 
And carried our lamb through the mists of night, 

To his fold in the Mount of God. 

With a tearful eye and a bleeding heart, 

We must bear it and struggle on ; 
Must climb the mount by the Shepherd's track, 

To the fold where our lamb is gone. 



s>r 



VIII. 



The departed ! the departed ! 

They visit us in dreams ; 
And they glide above our memories, 

Like shadows over streams : 
We know that they are happy, 

With their angel plumage on, 
But our hearts are very desolate 

To think that they are gone. 

_ fN almost every household there is cher- 
51) ished the memory of some dear soul that 
^^ has gone out to return no more. The 
mother tenderly remembers her babe ; the 
father thinks regretfully of his manly son, 
whose youth was so full of promise ; the chil- 
dren grieve for the loss of a sweet and gentle 
sister, or a dear brother, a brave and generous 
boy, whose faults are all forgotten, and his 



THE MEMOKY OF THE DEAD. 249 

virtues all remembered. In every home there 
is an enshrined memory, a sacred relic, a ring, 
a lock of shining hair, a broken plaything, a 
book, a picture, something sacredly kept and 
guarded, which speaks of death, vs^hich tells 
as plainly as words, of some one long since 
gone. For, truly, 

There is no flock, however watched and tended, 

But one dead lamb is there ! 
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 

But has one vacant chair I 

It is one of the most beautiful traits of our 
humanity, this tender memory of the dead; 
this quick forgetfulness of all that was un- 
pleasant, and this eager calling up of every 
grace and beauty, of every gentle and winning 
thing in the character and life of the departed. 
Some one has truly said : * ' Let death take 
from the household the troublesome and un- 
governable child, and all that is remembered 
is his sweet and gentle words, his rare quali- 
ties, his loving way, his beauty and manli- 
ness. The child stands before his parent's 



250 THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD. 

eyes, not as what he was, but as what he 
might have been had all God put in him been 
perfected by love and grace. He is now 
always 'dear child' in their thought, and no 
longer selfish and unlovely. The children 
long for their dead companion with real and 
tender grief — they would be pleasanter were 
he back again ; they are surprised to find how 
much they loved him. Friends long to have 
the opportunity, now lost, to show their love. 
Why did I not prize him more — why did I 
not serve him better, is the universal feeling." 

And this is equally true of all, as well as 
of children. Death seems to sanctify all our 
thoughts of the departed ; we willingly forget 
the evil, and remember only the good there 
was in them. There is a sweet expression of 
this feeling, this sacred memory of the dead, 
in a passage from Washington Irving, which 
follows : 

' ' The sorrow for the dead is the only sor- 
row from which we refuse to be divorced. 
Every other would we seek to heal — every 



THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD. 251 

othei' affliction to forget ; but this wound we 
consider it a duty to keep open — this afflic- 
tion we cherish and brood over in solitude. 
AVhere is the mother who would willingly for- 
get the infant that perished like a blossom 
from her arms, though every recollection is a 
pang? Where is the child who would wil- 
lingly forget the most tender of parents, 
though to remember be but to lament? Who, 
even in the hour of ao-onv, would forofet the 
friend over whom he mourns? Who, even 
when the tomb is closing upon the remains 
of her he most loved, when he feels his 
heart as it were, crushed in the closing of 
its portal, would accept of consolation that 
must be bought by forgetfulness ? No ; the 
love which survives the tomb is one of the 
noblest attributes of the soul. It has its woes, 
it likewise has its delights ; and when the 
overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into 
the gentle tear of recollection — when the 
sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over 
the present ruins of all that we most loved, 



252 THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD. 

IS softened away into pensive meditation on 
all that it was in the days of its loveliness — 
who would root out the sorrow from the 
heart? Though it may sometimes throw a 
passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, 
or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of 
gloom, yet who would change it even for the 
song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry? 
No ; there is a voice from the tomb sweeter 
than song. There is a remembrance of the 
dead, to which we turn even from the charms 
of the living. Oh, the grave ! the grave ! It 
buries every error — covers every defect, ex- 
tinguishes every resentment ! From its peace- 
ful bosom spring none but fond regrets and 
tender recollections." 

Who that has ever been bereaved has not 
realized this in his own experience ; and felt 
that there is a sorrow better for him, dearer 
to him, than any joy the world can give. 
Who that has ever lost a beloved one, a child, 
a parent, a friend, has not sometime realized 
that, dead, they have become more to him 



THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD. 253 

than they ever could have been Hving — nay, 
that, dead, they have done more for him, 
blessed him more, lifted him nearer to God 
and the heavenly life, than they could ever 
have done while in the body. O yes, the 
memory of the dead often has for us a sancti- 
fying power which the presence of the living, 
however sweet their communion, never had ; 
and in our frequent thought of them, we find 
that our hearts and hopes are slowly disen- 
tangling themselves from the earthly, and 
steadily drifting heavenward. 

' ' How beautiful is the memory of the dead ! 
What a holy thing it is in the human heart, 
and what a chastening influence it sheds upon 
human life ! How it subdues all the harsh- 
ness that grows up within us in the daily 
intercourse with the world ! How it melts 
our unkindness, softens our pride, kindling 
our deepest love, and waking our highest 
aspirations ! Is there one who has not some 
loved friend gone into the eternal world, with 
whom he delights to live again in memory ? 



254 THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD. 

Does he not love to sit down in the hushed 
and tranquil hours of existence, and call 
around him the face, the form, so familiar and 
cherished ? 

' ' The blessed dead ! how free from stain is 
our love for them ! The earthly taint of our 
affections is buried with that which was corrup- 
tible, and the divine flame in its purity illu- 
mines our breast. We have now no fear of 
losing them. They are fixed for us eternally 
in the mansions prepared for our re-union. 
Our hearts are sanctified by their words which 
we remember. How wise they have now 
grown in the limitless fields of truth. How 
joyous they have become by the undying 
fountains of pleasure. The immortal dead ! 
how unchanging is their love for us. How 
tenderly they look down upon us, and how 
closely they surround our being. How earn- 
estly they rebuke the evil of our lives. 

'^Let men talk pleasantly of the dead, as 
those who no longer suffer and are tried — as 
those who pursue no longer the fleeting, but 



THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD. 255 

have grasped and secured the real. With 
them the fear and the longings, the hope, and 
the terror, and the pain are past : the fruition 
of life has begun. How unkind, that when 
we put away their bodies, we should cease the 
utterance of their names. The tender-hearted 
dead who struggled so in parting from us ! 
why should we speak of them in awe, and 
remember them only with sighing? Very 
dear were they when hand clasped hand, and 
heart responded to heart. Why are they less 
dear when they have grown worthy a higher 
love than ours, and their perfected souls 
might receive even our adoration ! By their 
hearth-side, and by their grave-side, in soli- 
tude, and amid the multitude, think cheer- 
fully and speak lovingly of the dead." 

" The dead are like the stars by day, 

Withdrawn from mortal eye, 
Yet holding unperceived their way 

Through the unclouded sky. 
By them, through holy hope and love, 

We feel in hours serene 
Connected with a world above, 

Immortal and unseen." 



IX. 

^^t §tn)3 mbn ^rcfo #lir. 



Many years the dust hath lain 

Smoothly o'er that marble face, 
And the busy world without 

Of his presence bears no trace ; 
But in faithful hearts he lives, 

Young as -when on earth he trod, 
Though a holy spirit now, 

Standing by the throne of God. 

^HE dead are the only people who never 
grow old. The man of four-score years 
and more remembers his father and 
mother as they were In his youth or childhood. 
If they died when he had numbered only half 
a score of years, he does not in his thought 
of them add to their age the three-score and 
ten years which he has lived since. At eighty 
they are the same to him as when he was ten ; 



THE DEAD NEVER GROW OLD. 257 

they have not changed at all since the day 
they died. Through all the toils and conflicts 
and sorrows of seventy years, the sweet face 
of his sainted mother lias hung in the portrait 
gallery of his memory, as fi^esh and fair as 
when lie took his last look of her. 

That manly and graceful youth, though he 
died lono' time ao^o, is the same in the thou<2:ht 
of his father; every lineament, every look, 
every expression of the face. The father him- 
self has grown old, and is beginning to bend 
under the weight of years ; but the son is still 
a young man, as fair in look, as erect in form, 
as elastic in step, as ever — and he will always 
be so to his father. 

And so with the mother and her babe. The 
child dies, and is always a child thenceforth. 
Half a century may go by, but it adds noth- 
ing to the age of the little prattler, who left 
her far back as long ago as that. Leigh Hunt 
says, with truth, that 'Vthose who have lost 
an infimt are never, as it were, without an 
infant child. They are the only persons who, 
17 



258 THE DEAD NEVER GEOW OLD. 

in one sense, retain it always, and they fur- 
nish their neighbors with the same idea. The 
other children grow up to manhood and wo- 
manhood, and suffer all the changes of mor- 
tality. This one is rendered an immortal 
child. Death has arrested it with his kindly 
harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image 
of youth and innocence." And the words of 
Ainsworth are as truthful as they are beauti- 
ful, when he says, ''the little boy that died, 
so long ago, is an eternal child ; and even as 
he crept over the threshold of God's gates 
ajar at the beckoning of the Lord ; so ever in 
the heart his parting look, with heaven shin- 
ing full upon his brow, the beauty that the 
heart grew warm beholding, remains un- 
touched by time, even as the unrent sky that 
let the wanderer in." 

This is one of God's kindly compensations 
for the loss which death inflicts. The be- 
reaved only have friends who never change. 
The fair-haired lad who went away in the 
flower of his age, never grows to manhood or 



THE DEAD NEVER GROW OLD. 259 

age in the memory of his brothers or sisters ; 
and the gentle girl who fell asleep in death, 
however long ago, still holds her place in 
their hearts, as young, as gladsome, as win- 
ning, as lovely as before the angel called her. 
The opening bud remains in all its beauty and 
sweetness ; and it Avill never pass into the 
full-blown rose, and fade and droop, and cast 
its withered leaves to the earth. 

The Country Parson has a passage which 
illustrates this peculiar feature in our thought 
of the dead : 

''Your little brother or sister, that died 
long ago, remains in death, and in remem- 
brance the same young thing forever. It is 
fourteen years this evening since the writer's 
sister left this Avorld. She was fifteen years 
old then — she is fifteen years old yet. I 
have grown older since by fourteen years, but 
she has never changed as they advanced ; and 
if God spares me to four-score, I never shall 
think of her as other than the youthful crea- 
ture she was when she faded. The other dav 



260 THE DEAD NEVER GROW OLD. 

I listened as a poor woman told of the death 
of her first-born child. He was two years 
old. She had a small washing-green, across 
which was stretched a rope that came, in the 
middle, close to the ground. The boy was 
leaning on the rope, swinging backwards and 
forwards, and shouting with delight. The 
mother went into her cottage, and lost sight 
of him for a minute ; and when she returned 
the little man was lying across the rope, dead. 
It had got under his chin : he had not sense 
to push it away ; and he was suffocated. 

' ' But the thing which mainly struck me 
was, that though it is eighteen years since 
then, the mother thought of her child as an 
infant of two years yet : it is a little child she 
looks for to meet her at the gate of the Golden 
City. Had her child lived he would have 
been twenty years old now ; he died, and he 
is only two : he is two yet ; he will never be 
more than two. The little rosy face of that 
morning, and the little half-articulate voice, 
would have been faintly remembered by the 



THE DEAD NEVER GROW OLD. 261 

mother had they gradually died into boyhood 
and manhood ; but that day stereotyped them : 
they remain unchanged." 

The poem which follows is a tender expres- 
sion of this thought ; and reveals the pleasing 
fact, that the 'kittle maiden," dying, is always 
a little maiden, and the '' little vacant chair " 
ever after sacred to her memory. 

still my heart and eyes are turning 

To a little vacant chair, 
Standing idly in the corner — 

Ever standing idly there : 
Once it held a little maiden, 

Very dear and very fair. 

In the fullest tide of rapture. 

In my life's serenest hour, 
When my spirit sang within me 

Like a bird in summer bower. 
Came a tempest sweeping o'er me, 

Came with desolating power. 

Then a voice of tender sweetness 

Died away in plaintive sighs *, 
Then a face of gentle beauty 

Faded from my yearning eyes, 
And a spirit pure and sinless 

Mounted to its native skies. 



262 THE DEAD NEVER GROW OLD. 

Oh ! the sorrow of that moment ; 

Oh ! the weary, weary pain, 
Pressing, like an iron fetter. 

Close on throbbing heart and brain, 
Waking thoughts of gloom and madness 

Like the captive's heavy chain. 

Years have passed, and griefs wild torrent 
Now hath slowly ebbed away ; 

Years have passed, and resignation, 
Smiling, bids me trust and pray ; 

Yet a memory, sad and sacred, 
Trembles at my heart alway. 

Ever as the shades of twilight 
Wrap the world in tender gloom, 

Comes a welcome, fairy vision, 
Stealing to my lonely room — 

Seeming, like a ray of sunshine, 
All the darkness to illume. 

Then the little chair beside me 
Rocketh softly to and fro ; 

Then fond eyes to mine are lifted ; 
Then sweet accents round me flow, 

Till again my dreaming spirit 
Drinks the bliss of long ago. 



X. 

'CIj^ 0HU£g 0f '§ma," at % 



** They shall be Mine." 0, lay them down to slumber, 
Calm in the strong assurance that he gives ; 
He calls them by their names, he knows their number, 
And they shall live as surely as he lives. 

fHE Scriptural record in Genesis xxiii, 
is pleasantly related to the title of this 
section: ''And the field of Ephron, 
which was in Machpelah, which was before 
Mamre, the field, and the cave which was 
therein, and all the trees that were in the 
field, that were in all the borders round about, 
were made sure unto Abraham, for a posses- 
sion of a burying-place by the sons of Heth." 
It is worthy of note, the care which was taken 
at this early period to secure suitable and 



264 ^^THE VALLEY OF PEACE," OR 

pleasant places for the burial of the dead. It 
is easy to see that the spot selected by the 
patriarch was retired, rural and pleasant to 
the eye. Not only the cave Is mentioned, but 
the field, or rural district, in which It Is sit- 
uated ; and special mention Is made of the 
trees, not only In the field Itself, but those 
also that were *'In all the borders round 
about." It would seem as If special contract 
had been made by Abraham that the border 
trees should be spared, or be left standing, to 
add to the beauty, the quiet, and agreeable- 
ness of the place where his dead were to be 
laid to their rest. 

And we find It afterward recorded that his 
family were burled In this lovely cemetery ; 
his son, and his son's son, and their wives. 
When Jacob drew nigh unto death he charged 
his sons, saying, '^I am to be gathered unto 
my people : bury me with my fathers in the 
cave that Is in the field of Machpelah, which is 
before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which 
Abraham bought for a possession of a burying- 



THE PLACE OF THE DEAD. 265 

place. There they burled Abraham and Sarah 
his wife ; there they buried Isaac and Rebecca 
his wife; and there I buried Leali. And 
when Jacob had made an end of conmianding 
his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, 
and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered 
unto his people." — Gen. xlix. 29. 

The Jews, and eastern nations generally, 
had their burial-places and tombs in the fields, 
at a distance beyond the city walls, in gardens, 
on the sides of the hills — in any secluded 
and pleasant spot w^hich taste or affection 
might fix upon as grateful to the eye, or sooth- 
ing; to the mournino' heart. And into this 
chosen and sacred place were gathered ever- 
greens, and flowers, and shrubbery ; and these 
w^ere vocal with the ever varying melodies of 
the forest songsters. 

Aside from any opinions respecting the 
future life of the departed, or the resurrection 
from the dead, this custom carries with it a 
pleasant look, and cannot but have a soften- 
ing and refining influence over the living. It 



266 *'THE VALLEY OF PEACE, '^ OR 

secures one spot to sacred thought and holy 
memories. It keeps the chain of remembrance 
bright, and links us more closely with the 
dead ; and so beautifies the heart with an ever 
fresh affection, and a perpetually growing re- 
ligious tenderness. It makes the grave not a 
place of gloom and despair, not the quickener 
of tears and bitter sighs ; but, with its* flowers 
and fragrance, its spring-tide greenness and 
renovation, a teacher of better hopes, and a 
symbol of the resurrection. 

And so it becomes in the wide wilderness 
of life a kind of oasis, cool and quiet, where 
we rest awhile on the journey homeward 
to heaven and our Father. The associations 
which gather about it are of a subdued and 
cheerful character. The pleasant light of the 
sun falls softly upon the perfumed bed where 
our loved ones have lain down to sleep 
after the weary march of life. The grand old 
trees, with their rich foliage, and long waving 
arms, bend over it kindly ; while the winds 
murmur plaintive strains among the leaves and 



THE PLACE OF THE DEAD. 267 

branches. The odorous breath of flowers is 
there, and their sweet faces look up smilingly 
and hopefully from the grave sod. The birds 
come and sing to the sleepers, and almost we 
can fancy that their delicious melody some- 
times floats into the dreams of our precious 
ones, and recalls the hours wdien we used to 
wander with them beneath the forest trees, and 
listen to the glad notes of the happy songsters. 

There is a beautiful incident mentioned by an 
eastern traveller, of which I am reminded 
here : — 

At Smyrna, the burial ground of the Arme- 
nians, like that of the Moslem, is removed a 
short distance from the town, is sprinkled 
with green trees ; and is a favorite resort, not 
only w^ith the bereaved, but with those w^hose 
feelings are not thus darkly overcast. I met 
there one morning a little girl, with a half- 
playful countenance, busy blue eye, and sunny 
locks, bearing in one hand a small cup of 
china, and in the other a w^reath of fresh flow- 
ers. Feeling a very natural curiosity to know 



268 ''THE VALLEY OF PEACE,'^ OR 

what she could do with these bright things in 
a place which seemed to partake so much of 
sadness, I watched her light motions. Reach- 
ing a retired grave covered with a plain 
marble slab, she emptied the seed — which it 
appeared the cup contained — into the slight 
cavities which had been scooped out in the 
corners of the level tablet, and laid the wreath 
on its pure face. 

''And why," I inquired, "my sweet girl, 
do you put seed in those little bowls there?" 

"It is to bring the birds here," she replied 
with a half-wondering look ; ' ' they will light 
on this tree when they have eaten the seed, 
and sing." 

"To whom do they sing, to you or to each 
other?" 

"Oh no!" she replied, "to my sister — 
she sleeps here." 

"But your sister is dead?" 

" Oh yes, sir, but she hears the birds sing." 

"Well, if she does hear the birds sing, she 
cannot see that wreath of flowers." 



THE PLACE OF THE DEAD. 269 

''But she knows I put it there. I told her, 
before they took her away from our house, I 
would come and see her every morning." 

''You must," I continued, "have loved 
that sister very much ; but you will never talk 
w^ith her any more — never see her again." 

"Yes, sir," she replied, with a brightened 
look, "I shall see her in heaven." 

"But she has gone to heaven already. I 
trust." 

"No, she stops under this tree till they 
bring me here, and then we are going to 
heaven together." 

It is matter of rejoicing that we are begin- 
ning to imitate the example of the Eastern 
nations in our cemeteries and burial grounds. 
We have witnessed with grateful satisfaction 
the change in this respect which has been 
gradually passing over the public mind and 
heart within a few years past. Formerly 
it was the practice to locate the "burying 
ground" in the most lone, desolate and barren 
spot that could be found ; as if the very space 



270 ''THE VALLEY OF PEACE," OR 

the dead occupied was grudged them. Every 
thing about it was disagreeable and calculated 
to repel. What inscriptions and epitaphs on 
the grave-stones ! What emblems — ghastly 
skulls, cross-bones, and grim skeletons ! all 
eminently fitted to fill the mind, and particu- 
larly the young mind, with dismal thoughts, 
and to make death and the grave subjects 
most unwelcome, and to be shunned as gloomy 
and terrifying intruders on the joys of life. 

But now all this is passing away ; and a 
better feeling, and a more cheerful faith, are 
growing up in regard to the dead and the true 
position and agencies of death — and, as a 
consequence, the burial place is assuming a 
more oriental and pleasant aspect ; is becom- 
ing in the expressive language of the Mora- 
vians, ''The Valley of Peace." Our Auburns 
and Greenwoods, our Laurel Hills and Forest 
Hills, and many other lovely rural spots that 
have been consecrated as the resting-places 
of the dead, are cultivating a better taste, 
and begetting a more Christian feeling. And 



THE PLACE OF THE DEAD. 271 

slowly these beautiful cemeteries with their 
tall and spreading forest trees, their sweet- 
smelling shrubbery, their choice flowers that 
have such a pleasant look, and seem to whis- 
per to the mourning and meditative of comfort 
and of great hopes ; with their significant 
emblems instinct and eloquent with the truth 
of immortal purity and blessedness — grad- 
ually, but with certain result, out from these, 
conjoined with a nobler and more cheerful 
religious faith, there is going an influence cor- 
rective of the false and terrifymg views of 
death so long prevalent. And this influence 
at last will lift up the curtain of clouds from 
the horizon of the grave, and let in the glo- 
rious splendor of life's setting sun upon the 
shadowy valley, revealing at the other end the 
golden gates of heaven standing open for the 
entrance of the liberated and rejoicing soul ! 

I do not forget, as the preceding pages 
show, that it is hard to sunder the ties which 
bind us to the living ; and that death has, at 
the first sight, an unwelcome look, that the 



272 ''THE VALLEY OF PEACE." 

grave seen through the mist of tears seems a 
cold and dark place. But it is for this very- 
reason that I rejoice in the change which has 
been brought about in the arrangements and 
appearance of our burial grounds, and which 
is beginning to make us feel that it is not 
so sad a thing, after all, to lay the weary 
body down to rest in so quiet and beautiful a 
spot, and where Nature folds it to her bosom 
with so gentle and loving an embrace. 

And we are comforted, too, in the thought 
that the sacred dust of our loved ones rests in 
so pleasant a place, and that such sweet and 
hopeful associations and emblems are gathered 
about it. And we are ready to say, 



*' Bring here the dead — a holy spell pervades 
Each grassy dell of these dim solitudes, 
And in these fragrant bowers, and green arcades, 

Religion's deepest, purest influence broods. 
Aye, brin^ them here, and let the soulless dust 

Rest where there sounds no jar of earthly strife, 
Where all things breathe a gentle, heavenly trust, 
And every bud and leaf with hope is rife. 
And even death itself speaks of Immortal Life ! " 




- . , J/ 



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